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\  ^  i*.-^^fe^^?-:  ^^-^^^^SèSS^ 


BOOK  OF  ÏHt 
HOMELESS 

xje^jlyvc des  Sans^Foijti) 


edited  by 

EDITH  WHARTON 


LIBRARY 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

SANTA  BARBARA 


PRESENTED  BY 

GERALD  HOWLAND 


/ 


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THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 


THE 

BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

(  LE  LIVRE  DES  SANS-FOTER  ) 
EDITED  BY  EDITH  WHARTON 

Original  Articles  in  ]  'erse  and  Prose 
Illustrations  reproduced  from  Original  Paintings  a?  Drawings 


t 


THE    BOOK   IS  SOLD 

FOR  THE   BENEFIT  OF  THE   AMERICAN   HOSTELS  FOR   REFUGEES 

(with  THE   FOYER   FR ANCO-BELGE) 

AND  OF  the  children  OF   FLANDERS  RESCUE  COMMITTEE 


NEW  YORK 
CHARLES  SCRIRNER'S  SONS 

MDCCCCXVI 


COPYRIGHT,   1916,  BY   CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


D.   B.   UPDIKE,  THE  MERRYMOUNT   PRESS,  BOSTON,  U.  S.  A. 


LETTRE  DU  GENERAL  JOFFRE 


Armée»  de  l' Est  RÉpunuqLK  Fh,\nçaise 

Le  Commandant  en  Chef 

Au  Grand  Quartier  Général,  le  1 8  Août,  1915 


Les  Etats-  Unis  d' Amérique  n'ont  pas  oublié  que  la  première 
page  de  l'Histoire  de  leur  indépendance  a  été  écrite  avec  un 
peu  de  sang  français. 

Par  leur  inépuisable  générosité  et  leur  grande  sympathie, 
ils  apportent  aujourd'hui  à  la  France,  qui  combat  pour  sa 
liberté,  l'aide  la  plus  précieuse  et  le  plus  puissant  récon- 
fort. 

J.  JOFFRE 


LETTER  FROM  GENERAL  JOFFRE 

[translation] 

Headquarters  of  the  Commander-in-chief 

of  the  Armies  of  the  French  Republic  August  I S^^,  1 9 1  S 

The  United  States  of  America  have  never  forgotten  that  the 
first  page  of  the  history  of  their  independence  was  partly 
written  in  French  blood. 

Inexhaustibly  generous  and  prof oundly  sympathetic,  these 
same  United  States  now  bring  aid  and  solace  to  France  in 
the  hour  of  her  struggle  for  liberty. 

J.  JOFFRE 


INTRODUCTION 

It  is  not  only  a  pleasure  but  a  duty  to  write  the  introduction  which  Mrs. 
Wharton  requests  for  "The  Book  of  the  Homeless."  At  the  outset  of  this 
war  I  said  that  hideous  though  the  atrocities  had  been  and  dreadful  though 
the  suffering,  yet  we  must  not  believe  that  these  atrocities  and  this  suf- 
fering paralleled  the  dreadful  condition  that  had  obtained  in  European 
warfare  during,  for  example,  the  seventeenth  century.  It  is  lamentable  to 
have  to  confess  that  I  was  probably  in  error.  The  fate  that  has  befallen 
Belgium  is  as  terrible  as  any  that  befell  the  countries  of  Middle  Europe 
during  theThirty  Years 'War  and  the  wars  of  the  following  half-century. 
There  is  no  higher  duty  than  to  care  for  the  refugees  and  above  all  the 
child  refugees  who  have  fled  from  Belgium.  This  book  is  being  sold  for  the 
benefit  of  the  American  Hostels  for  Refugees  and  for  the  benefit  of  The 
Children  of  Flanders  Relief  Committee,  founded  in  Paris  by  Mrs.  Whar- 
ton in  November,  1914,  and  enlarged  by  her  in  April,  1915,  and  chiefly 
maintained  hitherto  by  American  subscriptions.  My  daughter,  who  in  No- 
vember and  December  last  was  in  Paris  with  her  husband.  Dr.  Derby, 
in  connection  with  the  American  Ambulance,  has  told  me  much  about 
the  harrowing  tragedies  of  the  poor  souls  who  were  driven  from  their 
country  and  on  the  verge  of  starvation,  without  food  or  shelter,  without 
hope,  and  with  the  members  of  the  family  all  separated  from  one  an- 
other, none  knowing  where  the  others  were  to  be  found,  and  who  had 
drifted  into  Paris  and  into  other  parts  of  France  and  across  the  Channel 
to  England  as  a  result  of  Belgium  being  trampled  into  bloody  mire.  In 
April  last  the  Belgian  Government  asked  Mrs.  Wharton  to  take  charge 
of  some  six  hundred  and  fifty  children  and  a  number  of  helpless  old 
men  and  women  from  the  ruined  towns  and  farms  of  Flanders.  This  is 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

the  effort  which  has  now  turned  into  The  Children  of  Flanders  Rescue 
Committee. 

I  appeal  to  the  American  people  to  picture  to  themselves  the  plight 
of  these  poor  creatures  and  to  endeavor  in  practical  fashion  to  secure 
that  they  shall  be  saved  from  further  avoidable  suffering.  Nothing  that 
our  people  can  do  will  remedy  the  frightful  wrong  that  has  been  com- 
mitted on  these  families.  Nothing  that  can  now  be  done  by  the  civilized 
world,  even  if  the  neutral  nations  of  the  civilized  world  should  at  last 
wake  up  to  the  performance  of  the  duty  they  have  so  shamefully  failed 
to  perform,  can  undo  the  dreadful  wrong  of  which  these  unhappy  chil- 
dren, these  old  men  and  women,  have  been  the  victims.  All  that  can  be 
done  surely  should  be  done  to  ease  their  suffering.  The  part  that  Amer- 
ica has  played  in  this  great  tragedy  is  not  an  exalted  part;  and  there  is 
all  the  more  reason  why  Americans  should  hold  up  the  hands  of  those 
of  their  number  who,  like  Mrs.  Wharton,  are  endeavoring  to  some  ex- 
tent to  remedy  the  national  shortcomings.  We  owe  to  Mrs.  Wharton  all 
the  assistance  we  can  give.  We  owe  this  assistance  to  the  good  name  of 
America,  and  above  all  for  the  cause  of  humanity  we  owe  it  to  the  chil- 
dren, the  women  and  the  old  men  who  have  suffered  such  dreadful  wrong 

for  absolutely  no  fault  of  theirs. 

Theodore  Roosevelt 


c  X  :i 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

CONTRIBUTIONS  OF  WRITERS   AND  MUSICIANS 

MAURICE  BARRÉS  pace 

Les  Frères  59 

Translation:  The  Brothers  61 

S.AR.\H  BERNHARDT 

Une  Promesse  64 

Translation:  A  Promise  64 

L.'VURENCE  BINYON 

The  Orphans  of  Flanders.  Poem  3 

PAUL  BOURGET 

Après  un  An  65 

Translation  :  One  Year  Later  67 

RUPERT  BROOKE 

The  Dance.  J  Song  4 

PAUL  CLAUDEL 

Le  Précieux  Sang.  Poem  5 

Translation:  The  Precious  Blood  6 

JE.AN  COCTF^^U 

La  Mort  des  Jeunes  Gens  de  la  Divine  Hellade.  Fragment.  Puem        9 

c  xi  : 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

Translation  :  How  the  Young  Men  died  in  Hellas.  A  Fragment  1 1 

JOSEPH  CONRAD 

Poland  Revisited  71 

VINCENT  D'INDY 

Musical  Score:  La  légende  de  Saint  Christophe  (  Acte  I,  Se.  HI)  55 

ELEONORA  DUSE 

Libertà  nella  Vita  98 

Translation:  The  Right  to  Liberty  98 

JOHN  GALSWORTHY 

Harvest  99 

EDMUND  GOSSE 

The  Arrogance  and  Servility  of  Germany  101 

ROBERT  GRANT 

A  Message.  Poem  14 

THOMAS  HARDY 

Cry  of  the  Homeless.  Poem  16 

PAUL  HERVIEU 

Science  et  Conscience  105 

Translation:  Science  and  Conscience  106 

:  xii  J 


CONTRIBUTIONS  OF  WRITERS  &  MUSICIANS 
WILLIAM  DE1\N  HO\\'ELLS 
The  Little  Children.  Poem  17 

GÉNÉRAL  HUMBERT 

Les  Arabes  avaient  Raison  109 

Translation:  An  Heroic  Stand  111 

HENRY  JAMES 

The  Long  Wards  115 

FRANCIS  JAM  MES 

Epitaphe.  Poem  18 

Translation:  An  Epitaph  19 

GÉNÉR.\L  JOFFRE 

Lettre  du  Général  JofFre  vii 

Translation:  Letter  from  General  Joffre  viii 

MAURICE  MAETERLINCK 

Notre  Héritage  127 

Translation:  Our  Inheritance  127 

EDWARD  SANDFORD  MARTIN 

We  Who  Sit  Afar  Off  ,129 

ALICE  MEYNPXL 

In  Sleep.  Poem  20 

C  xiii  J 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 
PAUL  ELMER  MORE 
A  Moment  of  Tragic  Purgation  133 

COMTESSE  DE  NOAILLES 

Nos  Morts.  Poem  2i 

Translation:  Our  Dead  21 

JOSEPHINE  PRESTON  PEABODY 

Two  Songs  of  a  Year:  1914-1915 

L  Children's  Kisses  23 

IL  The  Sans-Foyer  25 

LILLA  CABOT  PERRY 

Rain  in  Belgium.  Poem  26 

AGNES  REPPLIER 

The  Russian  Bogyman  139 

HENRI  DE  RÉGNIER 

L'Exilé.  Poem  27 

Translation:  The  Exile  28 

THEODORE  ROOSEVELT 

Introduction  ix 

EDMOND  ROSTAND 

Horreur  et  Beauté.  Poem  30 


CONTRIBUTIONS  OF  IFRITERS  &  MUSICIANS 
Translation  :  Horror  and  Beauty  SO 

GEORGE  SANTA YANA 

The  Undergraduate  Killed  in  Battle.  Poem  32 

IGOR  STRA\'INSKY 

Musical  Score:  Souvenir  d'une  marche  boche  49 

ANDRÉ  SUARÈS 

Chant  des  Galloises  143 

Translation:  Song  of  the  Welsh  Women  147 

EDITH  M.  THOMAS 

The  Children  and  the  Flag.  Puem  33 

HERBERT  TRENCH 

The  Troubler  of  Tclaro.  Poem  34 

EMILE  VERHAEREN 

Le  Printemps  de  1915-  Poem  37 

Translation:  The  New  Spring  38 

MRS.  HUMPHRY  WARD  (Mauv  A.  W.mid) 

Wordsworth's  Valley  in  War-time  151 

BARRETT  WENDELL 

1915.  Poem  40 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 
EDITH  WHARTON 

Preface  xix 

The  Tryst.  Poem  41 

MARGARET  L.  WOODS 

Finisterre.  Poem  43 

W.  B.  YE.\TS 

A  Reason  for  Keeping  Silent.  Poem  45 


The  French  poems,  except  M.  Rostand's  Sonnet 
are  translated  by  Mrs.  fVharton 


L  xvi  :i 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

CONIKIBUTIONS  OK  ARTISTS 

LEON  BAKST  following  pace 

Portrait  of  Jean  Cocteau.  From  an  unpublished  crayon  sketch  8 

Mcnade.  From  a  zvater-colour  sketch  126 

MAX  BEERBOHM 

A  Gracious  Act.  (Caricature.)  From  a  water-colour  sketch  104 

JACQUES-EMILE  BLANCHE 

Portrait  of  Thomas  Hardy.  From  a  photograph  of  the  painting  16 

Portrait  of  George  Moore.  From  a  photograph  of  the  painting  138 

Portrait  of  Igor  Stravinsky.  From  a  study  in  oils  46 

EDWIN  HOWLAND  BLASHFIELD 

A  Woman's  Head.  From  the  original  drawing  14a 

LÉON  BONNAT 

Pegasus.  From  a  pencil  and  pen-and-ink  sketch  70 

P.  A.  J.  DAGNAN-BOUVERET 

Brittany  Woman.  From  a  drawing  in  coloured  crayons  42 

WALTER  GAY 

Interior.  From  an  original  water-colour  sketch  gs 

C  xvii  ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 
J.  L.  GÉRÔME 

Turkish  Soldier.  From  the  origiiial  pencil  drazving  made  in  1857         108 

CH.\RLES  DANA  GIBSON 

"The  Girl  he  left  behind  Him."  From  a  pen-und-ink  sketch  26 

EMILE-RENÉ  MENARD 

Nude  Figure.  From  a  sketch  in  coloured  crayon  150 

CLAUDE  MONET 

Landscape.  From  an  early  coloured  pastel  22 

Boats  on  a  Beach.  From  an  early  crayon  drazving  100 

PIERRE-AUGUSTE  RÉNOIR 

Portrait  of  his  Son,  wounded  in  the  War.  From  a  charcoal  sketch         64 

AUGUSTE  RODIN 

Two  Women.  From  an  original  zvater-colour  sketch  98 

THÉO  \  AN  RYSSELBERGHE 

Portrait  of  André  Gide.  Fi'om  a  pencil  drazving  4 

Portrait  of  Emile  Verhaeren.  From  a  pencil  drawing  36 

Portrait  of  Vincent  d'Indy.  From  a  photograph  of  the  painting  52 

JOHN  SINGER  SARGENT,  R.A. 

Portrait  of  Henry  James.  Frotn  a  photograph  of  the  painting  1 14 

Two  Heads.  From  a  pencil  drawing  132 

[  xviii  ] 


PREFACE 
I 

THE   HOSTELS 

L/AST  year,  among  the  waifs  swept  to  Paris  by  the  great  torrent  of  the 
flight  from  the  North,  there  came  to  the  American  Hostels  a  Httle  acrobat 
from  a  strolling  circus.  He  was  not  much  more  than  a  boy,  and  he  had 
never  before  been  separated  from  his  family  or  from  his  circus.  All  his 
people  were  mummers  or  contortionists,  and  he  himself  was  a  mere  mote 
of  the  lime-light,  knowing  life  only  in  terms  of  the  tent  and  the  platform, 
the  big  drum,  the  dancing  dogs,  the  tight-rope  and  the  spangles. 

In  the  sad  preoccupied  Paris  of  last  winter  it  was  not  easy  to  find  a 
corner  for  this  little  figure.  But  the  lad  could  not  be  left  in  the  streets,  and 
after  a  while  he  was  placed  as  page  in  a  big  hotel.  He  was  given  good 
pay,  and  put  into  a  good  livery,  and  told  to  be  a  good  boy.  He  tried  .  .  . 
he  really  tried  .  .  .  but  the  life  was  too  lonely.  Nobody  knew  anything 
about  the  only  things  he  knew,  or  was  particularly  interested  in  the 
programme  of  the  last  performance  the  company  had  given  at  Liège  or 
Maubeuge.  The  little  acrobat  could  not  understand.  He  told  his  friends 
at  the  Hostels  how  lonely  and  puzzled  he  was,  and  they  tried  to  help 
him.  But  he  could  n't  sleep  at  night,  because  he  was  used  to  being  up 
till  nearly  daylight;  and  one  night  he  went  up  to  the  attic  of  the  hotel, 
broke  open  several  trunks  full  of  valuables  stored  there  by  rich  lodgers, 
and  made  off^  with  some  of  the  contents.  He  was  caught,  of  course,  and 
the  things  he  had  stolen  were  produced  in  court.  They  were  the  spangled 
dresses  belonging  to  a  Turkish  family,  and  the  embroidered  coats  of  a 
lady's  lap-dog.  .  .  . 

I  have  told  this  poor  little  story  to  illustrate  a  fact  which,  as  time  passes, 

[  xix  : 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

is  beginning  to  be  lost  sight  of:  the  fact  that  we  workers  among  the 
refugees  are  trying,  first  and  foremost,  to  help  a  homesick  people.  We  are 
not  preparing  for  their  new  life  an  army  of  voluntary  colonists  ;  we  are 
seeking  to  console  for  the  ruin  of  their  old  life  a  throng  of  bewildered 
fugitives.  It  is  our  business  not  only  to  feed  and  clothe  and  keep  alive 
these  people,  but  to  reassure  and  guide  them.  And  that  has  been,  for  the 
last  year,  the  task  of  the  American  Hostels  for  Refugees. 

The  work  was  started  in  November,  1914,  and  since  that  time  we  have 
assisted  some  9,300  refugees,  given  more  than  235,000  meals,  and  dis- 
tributed 48,333  garments. 

But  this  is  only  the  elementary  part  of  our  work.  We  have  done  many 
more  difficult  things.  Our  employment  agency  has  found  work  for  over 
3,500  men.  Our  work-rooms  occupy  about  120  women,  and  while  they 
sew,  their  babies  are  kept  busy  and  happy  in  a  cheerful  day-nursery,  and 
the  older  children  are  taught  in  a  separate  class. 

The  British  Young  Women's  Christian  Association  of  Paris  has  shown 
its  interest  in  our  work  by  supplying  us  with  teachers  for  the  grown-up 
students  who  realize  the  importance  of  learning  English  as  a  part  of  their 
business  equipment;  and  these  classes  are  eagerly  followed. 

Lastly,  we  have  a  free  clinic  where  3,500  sick  people  have  received 
medical  advice,  and  a  dispensary  where  4,500  have  been  given  first  aid 
and  nursing  care;  and  during  the  summer  we  sent  many  delicate  children 
to  the  seaside  in  the  care  of  various  Vacation  Colonies. 

This  is  but  the  briefest  sketch  of  our  complicated  task  ;  a  task  under- 
taken a  year  ago  by  a  small  group  of  French  and  American  friendsmoved 
to  pity  by  the  thousands  of  fugitives  wandering  through  the  streets  of 
Paris  and  sleeping  on  straw  in  the  railway-stations. 

We  thought  then  that  the  burden  we  were  assuming  would  not  have 

:  XX  ] 


PREFACE 

to  be  borne  for  more  than  three  or  four  months,  and  we  were  confident 
of  receiving  the  necessary  financial  help.  We  were  not  mistaken;  and 
America  has  kept  the  American  Hostels  alive  for  a  year.  But  we  are 
now  entering  on  our  second  year,  with  a  larger  number  to  care  for,  and 
a  more  delicate  task  to  perform.  The  longer  the  exile  of  these  poor  people 
lasts,  the  more  carefully  and  discriminatingly  must  we  deal  with  them. 
They  are  not  all  King  Alberts  and  Queen  Elisabeths,  as  some  idealists 
apparently  expected  them  to  be.  Some  are  hard  to  help,  others  unappre- 
ciative  of  what  is  done  for  them.  But  many,  many  more  are  grateful,  ap- 
preciative, and  eager  to  help  us  to  help  them.  And  of  all  of  them  we  must 
say,  as  Henri  de  Régnier  says  for  us  in  the  poem  written  for  this  Book: 

He  who,  flying  from  the  fate  of  slaves 
With  brow  indignant  and  with  empty  hand. 
Has  left  his  house,  his  country  and  his  graves. 
Comes  like  a  Pilgrim  from  a  Holy  Land. 
Receive  him  thus,  if  in  his  blood  there  be 
One  drop  of  Belgium's  immortality. 

II 

THE  CHILDREN 

One  day  last  August  the  members  of  the  "Children  of  Flanders  Res- 
cue Committee"  were  waiting  at  the  door  of  the  Villa  Bcthanie,  a  large 
seminary  near  Paris  which  had  been  put  at  the  disposal  of  the  committee 
for  the  use  of  the  refugee  children. 

The  house  stands  in  a  park  with  fine  old  trees  and  a  wide  view  over 
the  lovely  rolling  country  to  the  northwest  of  Paris.  The  day  was  beau- 
tiful, the  borders  of  the  drive  were  glowing  with  roses,  the  lawns  were 

C  xxi  3 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

fragrant  with  miniature  hay-cocks,  and  the  flower-beds  about  the  court 
had  been  edged  with  garlands  of  little  Belgian  flags. 

Suddenly  we  heard  a  noise  of  motor-horns,  and  the  gates  of  the  park 
were  thrown  open.  Down  toward  us,  between  the  rose-borders,  a  pro- 
cession was  beginning  to  f)our:  first  a  band  of  crippled  and  infirm  old 
men,  then  a  dozen  Sisters  of  Charity  in  their  white  caps,  and  lastly  about 
ninety  small  boys,  each  with  his  little  bundle  on  his  back. 

They  were  a  lamentable  collection  of  human  beings,  in  pitiful  contrast 
to  the  summer  day  and  the  bright  flowers.  The  old  men,  for  the  most 
part,  were  too  tired  and  dazed  to  know  where  they  were,  or  what  was 
happening  to  them,  and  the  Sisters  were  crying  from  fatigue  and  home- 
sickness. The  boys  looked  grave  too,  but  suddenly  they  caught  sight  of 
the  flowers,  the  hay-cocks,  and  the  wide  house-front  with  all  its  windows 
smiling  in  the  sun.  They  took  a  long  look  and  then,  of  their  own  accord, 
without  a  hint  from  their  elders,  they  all  broke  out  together  into  the  Bel- 
gian national  hymn.  The  sound  of  that  chorus  repaid  the  friends  who 
were  waiting  to  welcome  them  for  a  good  deal  of  worry  and  hard  work. 

The  flight  from  western  Flanders  began  last  April,  when  Ypres,  Pop- 
eringhe,  and  all  the  open  towns  of  uninvaded  Belgium  were  swept  by 
a  senseless  and  savage  bombardment.  Even  then  it  took  a  long  time  to 
induce  the  inhabitants  to  give  up  the  ruins  of  their  homes;  and  before 
going  away  themselves  they  sent  their  children. 

Train-load  after  train-load  of  Flemish  children  poured  into  Paris  last 
spring.  They  were  gathered  in  from  the  ruins,  from  the  trenches,  from 
the  hospices  where  the  Sisters  of  Charity  had  been  caring  for  them,  and 
where,  in  many  cases,  they  had  been  huddled  in  with  the  soldiers  quar- 
tered in  the  same  buildings.  Before  each  convoy  started,  a  young  lady 

C  xxii  2 


PREFACE 

with  fair  hair  and  very  blue  eyes  walked  through  the  train,  distributing 
chocolate  and  sandwiches  to  the  children  and  speaking  to  each  of  them 
in  turn,  very  kindly;  and  all  but  the  very  littlest  children  understood 
that  this  lady  was  their  Queen.  .  .  . 

The  Belgian  government,  knowing  that  I  had  been  working  for  the 
refugees,  asked  me  to  take  charge  of  sixty  little  girls,  and  of  the  Sisters 
accompanying  them.  We  found  a  house,  fitted  it  up,  begged  for  money 
and  clothes,  and  started  The  Children  of  Flanders  Rescue  Committee. 
Now,  after  six  months,  we  have  five  houses,  and  are  caring  for  nearly 
900  people,  among  whom  are  about  200  infirm  old  men  and  women 
whom  the  Sisters  had  to  bring  because  there  was  no  one  left  to  look 
after  them  in  the  bombarded  towns. 

Every  war- work,  if  it  has  any  vitality  in  it,  is  bound  to  increase  in  this 
way,  and  is  abnost  certain  to  find  the  help  it  needs  to  keep  it  growing. 
We  have  always  been  so  confident  of  this  that  we  have  tried  to  do  for 
our  Children  of  Flanders  what  the  Hostels  have  done  for  the  grown-up 
refugees:  not  only  to  feed  and  clothe  and  shelter,  but  also  to  train  and 
develop  them.  Some  of  the  Sisters  are  skilled  lace-makers;  and  we  have 
founded  lace-schools  in  three  of  our  houses.  There  is  a  dearth  of  lace 
at  present,  owing  to  the  ruin  of  the  industry  in  Belgium  and  Northern 
France,  and  our  little  lace-makers  have  already  received  large  orders 
for  Valenciennes  and  other  laces.  The  smallest  children  are  kept  busy 
in  classes  of  the  "Montessori"  type,  provided  by  the  generosity  of  an 
American  friend,  and  the  boys,  out  of  school-hours,  are  taught  garden- 
ing and  a  little  carpentry.  We  hope  later  to  have  the  means  to  enlarge 
this  attempt  at  industrial  training. 

This  is  what  we  are  doing  for  the  Children  of  Flanders;  but,  above  and 
beyond  all,  we  are  caring  for  their  health  and  their  physical  develop- 

Q  xxiii  ]] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

ment.  The  present  hope  of  France  and  Belgium  is  in  its  children,  and  in 
the  hygienic  education  of  those  who  have  them  in  charge  ;  and  we  have 
taught  the  good  Sisters  many  things  they  did  not  know  before  concern- 
ing the  physical  care  of  the  children.  The  results  have  been  better  than 
we  could  have  hoped  ;  and  those  who  saw  the  arrival  of  the  piteous  waifs 
a  few  months  ago  would  scarcely  recognize  them  in  the  round  and  rosy 
children  playing  in  the  gardens  of  our  Houses. 


m 

THE  BOOK 

I  said  just  now  that  when  we  founded  our  two  refugee  charities  we 
were  confident  of  getting  money  enough  to  carry  them  on.  So  we  were; 
and  so  we  had  a  right  to  be  ;  for  at  the  end  of  the  first  twelvemonth  we 
are  still  alive  and  solvent. 

But  we  never  dreamed,  at  the  start,  that  the  work  would  last  longer 
than  a  year,  or  that  its  demands  would  be  so  complex  and  increasing. 
And  when  we  saw  before  us  the  certainty  of  having  to  carry  this  poor 
burden  of  humanity  for  another  twelve  months,  we  began  to  wonder 
how  we  should  get  the  help  to  do  it. 

Then  the  thought  of  this  Book  occurred  to  me.  I  appealed  to  my  friends 
who  write  and  paint  and  compose,  and  they  to  other  friends  of  theirs, 
writers,  painters,  composers,  statesmen  and  dramatic  artists;  and  so  the 
Book  gradually  built  itself  up,  page  by  page  and  picture  by  picture. 

You  will  see  from  the  names  of  the  builders  what  a  gallant  piece  of 
architecture  it  is,  what  delightful  pictures  hang  on  its  walls,  and  what 
noble  music  echoes  through  them.  But  what  I  should  have  liked  to  show 
is  the  readiness,  the  kindliness,  the  eagerness,  with  which  all  the  col- 

C  xxiv  ] 


PREFACE 

laborators,  from  first  to  last,  have  lent  a  hand  to  the  building.  Perhaps 

you  will  guess  it  for  yourselves  when  you  read  their  names  and  see  the 

beauty  and  variety  of  what  they  have  given.  So  I  efface  myself  from  the 

threshold  and  ask  you  to  walk  in. 

Edith  Whakton 

Paris,  November,  1915 


Gifts  of  money  for  the  American  Hostels  for  Refugees,  and  the  Children  of  Flanders 
Rescue  Committee  should  be  addressed  to  Mrs.  Wharton,  53  rue  de  Varenne, 
Paris,  or  to  Henry  W.  Munroe,  Treasurer,  care  of  Mrs.  Cadwalader  Jones,  21 
East  Eleventh  Street,  New  York. 

Gifts  in  kind  should  be  forwarded  to  the  American  War  Relief  Clearing  House, 
5  rue  François  T'',  Paris  {wif/i  Airs.  Jf'hart<>u\s  mime  in  the  left-lmml  ninwr),  via 
the  American  offices  of  the  Clearing  House,  15  Broad  Street,  New  York. 

C  XXV  J 


CONTRIBUTORS  OF  POETRY  AND  MUSIC 

LAURENCE  BINYON 

RUPERT  BROOKE 

PAUL  CLAUDEL 

JEAN   COCTEAU 

ROBERT   GRANT 

THOMAS   HARDY 

W.  D.  HOWELLS 

FRANCIS  JAMMES 

ALICE  MEYNELL 

COMTESSE  DE  NOAILLES 

JOSEPHINE  PRESTON   PEABODY 

LILLA  CABOT  PERRY 

HENRI   DE  RÉGNIER 

EDMOND  ROSTAND 

GEORGE  SANTAYANA 

EDITH   M.  THOMAS 

HERBERT  TRENCH 

EMILE  VERHAEREN 

BARRETT  WENDELL 

EDITH  WHARTON 

MARGARET   L.  WOODS 

W.  B.  YEATS 

IGOR  STRAVINSKY 
VINCENT  D'INDY 


THE  ORPHANS  OF  FLANDERS 

Where  is  the  land  that  fathered,  nourished,  poured 
The  sap  of  a  strong  race  into  your  veins,— 
Land  of  wide  tihh,  of  farms  and  granaries  stored. 
And  old  towers  chiming  over  peaceful  plains? 

It  is  become  a  vision,  barred  away 
Like  light  in  cloud,  a  memory,  a  belief. 
On  those  lost  plains  the  Glory  of  yesterday 
Builds  her  dark  towers  for  the  bells  of  Grief. 

It  is  become  a  splendour-circled  name 
For  all  the  world.  A  torch  against  the  skies 
Burns  from  that  blood-spot,  the  unpardoned  shame 
Of  them  that  conquered:  but  your  homeless  eyes 

See  rather  some  brown  pond  by  a  white  wall, 
Red  cattle  crowding  in  the  rutty  lane. 
Some  garden  where  the  hollyhocks  were  tall 
In  the  Augusts  that  shall  never  be  again. 

There  your  thoughts  cling  as  the  long-thrusting  root 
Clings  in  the  ground  ;  your  orphaned  hearts  are  there. 
O  mates  of  sunburnt  earth,  your  love  is  mute 
But  strong  like  thirst  and  deeper  than  despair. 

You  have  endured  what  pity  can  but  grope 
To  feel  ;  into  that  darkness  enters  none. 
We  have  but  hands  to  help:  yours  is  the  hope 
Whose  silent  courage  rises  with  the  sun. 

Laurence  Binyon 

:  3  ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 


THE  DANCE 

A  SONG 

As  the  Wind  and  as  the  Wind 

In  a  corner  of  the  way, 
Goes  stepping,  stands  twirling. 
Invisibly,  comes  whirling, 
Bows  before  and  skips  behind 

In  a  grave,  an  endless  play  — 

So  my  Heart  and  so  my  Heart 

Following  where  your  feet  have  gone. 
Stirs  dust  of  old  dreams  there; 
He  turns  a  toe  ;  he  gleams  there. 
Treading  you  a  dance  apart. 

But  you  see  not.  You  pass  on. 

Rupert  Brooke 


L  4  ;] 


THEO  VAN  RTSSELBERGHE 
PORTRAIT  OF  ANDRÉ  GIDE 

FROM  A  PENCIL  DRAWING 


e\ 


\ 


1::??.! 


PAUL  CLAUDEL 


LE  PRECIEUX  SANG 


-Seigneur,  qui  pour  un  verre  d'eau  nous  avez  promis 
la  mer  illimitée, 

Qui  sait  si  vous  n'avez  pas  soif  aussi  ? 
Et  que  ce  sang  qui  est  tout  ce  que  nous  avons  soit  propre 
à  vous  désaltérer. 

C'est  vrai,  puisque  vous  l'avez  dit! 
Si  vraiment  il  y  a  une  source  en  nous,  eh  bien,  c'est  ce 
que  nous  allons  voir! 

Si  ce  vin  a  quelque  vertu 
Et  si  notre  sang  est  rouge,  comme  vous  le  dites,  com- 
ment le  savoir 

Autrement  que  quand  il  est  répandu? 
Si  notre  sang  est  vraiment  précieux,  comme  vous  le  dites, 
si  vraiment  il  est  comme  de  l'or, 
S'il  sert,  pourquoi  le  garder? 
Et  sans  savoir  ce  qu'on  peut  acheter  avec,  pourquoi  le 
réserver  comme  un  trésor, 

Mon  Dieu, quand  vous  nous  le  demandez? 
Nos  péchés  sont  grands,  nous  le  savons,  et  qu'il  faut 
absolument  faire  pénitence. 

Mais  il  est  difficile  pour  un  homme  de  pleurer. 
Voici  notre  sang  au  lieu  de  larmes  que  nous  avons  ré- 
pandu pour  la  France: 

Faites-en  ce  que  vous  voudrez. 
Prenez-le,  nous  vous  le  donnons,  tirez-en  vous-même 
usage  et  bénéfice, 

Nous  ne  vous  faisons  point  de  demande 


C   5   ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

Mais  si  vous  avez  besoin  de  notre  amour  autant  que  nous 
avons  besoin  de  votre  justice, 

Alors  c'est  que  votre  soif  est  grande! 

P.  Claudel 


Mllel  1915 


THE  PRECIOUS  BLOOD 

[translation] 

Oh,  what  if  Thou,  that  for  a  cup  of  water  promisest 

The  illimitable  sea, 

Thou,  Lord,  dost  also  thirst? 

Hast  Thou  not  said,  our  blood  shall  quench  Thee  best 

And  first 

Of  any  drink  there  be  ? 

If  then  there  be  such  virtue  in  it.  Lord, 
Ah,  let  us  prove  it  now  ! 

And,  save  by  seeing  it  at  Thy  footstool  poured. 
How,  Lord — oh,  how? 

If  it  indeed  be  precious  and  like  gold. 
As  Thou  hast  taught, 

Why  hoard  it?  There's  no  wealth  in  gems  unsold. 
Nor  joy  in  gems  unbought. 

Our  sins  are  great,  we  know  it;  and  we  know 
We  must  redeem  our  guilt; 
Even  so. 


PAUL  CLAUDEL 

But  tears  are  difficult  for  a  man  to  shed, 
And  here  is  our  blood  poured  out  for  France  instead, 
To  do  with  as  Thou  wilt! 

Take  it,  O  Lord  !  And  make  it  Thine  indeed, 
Void  of  all  lien  and  fee. 
Nought  else  we  ask  of  Thee; 

But  if  Thou  needst  our  Love  as  we  Thy  Justice  need, 
Great  must  Thine  hunger  be! 

Paul  Claudel 


c  7  : 


LEON  BAKST 
PORTRAIT  OF  JEAN  COCTEAU 

FROM   AN  UNPUBLISHED  CRAYON  SKETCH 


RWjKST 


JEAJ^  COCTEAU 


LA  MORT  DES  JEUNES  GENS  DE 
LA  DIVINE  H  ELLA  DE 

FRAGMENT 

Antigone  criant  et  marchant  au  supplice 
N'avait  pas  de  la  mort  leur  sublime  respect; 
Ce  n'était  pas  pour  eux  une  funeste  paix, 
C'était  un  ordre  auquel  il  faut  qu'on  obéisse. 

Ils  ne  subissaient  pas  l'offense  qu'il  fît  beau 
Que  le  soleil  mûrît  les  grappes  de  glycine; 
Ils  étaient  souriant  en  face  du  tombeau, 
Les  rossignols  élus  que  la  rose  assassine. 

Ils  ne  regrettaient  pas  les  tendres  soirs  futurs, 

Les  conversations  sur  les  places  d'Athènes, 

Où,  le  col  altéré  de  poussière  et  d'azur, 

Pallas,  comme  un  pigeon,  pleure  au  bord  des  fontaines. 

Ils  ne  regrettaient  pas  les  gradins  découverts 
Où  le  public  trépigne,  insiste. 
Pour  regarder,  avant  qu'ils  montent  sur  la  piste, 
Les  cochers  bleus  riant  avec  les  cochers  verts. 

Ils  ne  regrettaient  pas  ce  loisir  disparate 
D'une  ville  qui  semble  un  sordide  palais. 
Où  l'on  se  réunit  pour  entendre  Socrate 
Et  pour  jouer  aux  osselets. 

Ils  étaient  éblouis  de  .tumulte  et  de  risque, 
Mais,  si  la  fourbe  mort  les  désignait  soudain, 

c  9  : 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

lis  laissaient  sans  gémir  sur  l'herbe  du  jardin 
Les  livres  et  le  disque. 

Ce  n'était  pas  pour  eux  l'insupportable  affront, 
Ils  se  couchaient  sans  choc,  sans  lutte,  sans  tapage, 
Comme  on  voit,  ayant  bien  remué  sous  le  front, 
Un  vers  définitif  s'étendre  sur  la  page. 

Ils  étaient  résignés,  vêtus,  rigides,  prêts 

Pour  cette  expérience  étrange. 

Comme  Hyacinthe  en  fleur  indolemment  se  change 

Et  comme  Cyparis  se  transforme  en  cyprès. 

Ils  ne  regrettaient  rien  de  vivre  en  lonie. 
D'être  libres,  d'avoir  des  mères  et  des  sœurs, 
Et  de  sentir  ce  lourd  sommeil  envahisseur 
Après  une  courte  insomnie. 

Ils  rentraient  au  séjour  qui  n'a  plus  de  saison. 
Où  notre  faible  orgueil  se  refuse  à  descendre, 
Sachant  que  l'urne  étroite  où  gît  un  peu  de  cendre 
Sera  tout  le  jardin  et  toute  la  maison. 

Jadis  j'ai  vu  mourir  des  frères  de  mon  âge. 
J'ai  vu  monter  en  eux  l'indicible  torpeur. 
Ils  avaient  tous  si  mal!  Ils  avaient  tous  si  peur! 
Ils  se  prenaient  la  tête  avec  des  mains  en  nage. 

Ils  ne  pouvaient  pas  croire,  ayant  si  soif,  si  faim, 
Un  tel  désir  de  tout  avec  un  cœur  si  jeune, 
A  ce  désert  sans  source,  à  cet  immense  jeûne, 
A  ce  terme  confus  qui  n  'a  jamais  de  fin. 

c  lo  :] 


JEAJ^  COCTEAU 

Ils  n'attendaient  plus  rien  de  la  tendresse  humaine 
Et  cherchaient  à  chasser  d'un  effort  douloureux 
L'Ange  noir  qui  se  couche  à  plat  ventre  sur  eux 
Et  qui  les  considère  avant  qu'il  les  emmène. 

Jean  Cocteau 


HOW  THE  YOUNG  MEN  DIED  IN  HELLAS 

A   FRAGMENT 

[translation] 

Antigone  went  wailing  to  the  dust. 
She  reverenced  not  the  face  of  Death  like  these 
To  whom  it  came  as  no  enfeebling  peace 
But  a  command  relentless  and  august. 

These  grieved  not  at  the  beauty  of  the  morn, 
Nor  that  the  sun  was  on  the  ripening  flow  er  ; 
Smiling  they  faced  the  sacrificial  hour, 
Blithe  nightingales  against  the  fatal  thorn. 

They  grieved  not  that  their  feet  no  more  should  rove 
The  Athenian  porticoes  in  twilight  leisure, 
Where  Pallas,  drunk  with  summer's  gold  and  azure. 
Brooded  above  the  fountains  like  a  dove. 

They  grieved  not  for  the  theatre's  high-banked  tiers, 
Where  restlessly  the  noisy  crowd  leans  over. 
With  laughter  and  with  jostling,  to  discover 
The  blue  and  green  of  chaffing  charioteers. 

[  Ï1  : 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

Nor  for  the  fluted  shafts,  the  carven  stones 
Of  that  sole  city,  bright  above  the  seas, 
Where  young  men  met  to  talk  with  Socrates 
Or  toss  the  ivory  bones. 

Their  eyes  were  lit  with  tumult  and  with  risk, 
But  when  they  felt  Death  touch  their  hands  and  pass 
They  followed,  dropping  on  the  garden  grass 
The  parchment  and  the  disk. 

It  seemed  no  wrong  to  them  that  they  must  go. 
They  laid  their  lives  down  as  the  poet  lays 
On  the  white  page  the  poem  that  shall  praise 
His  memory  when  the  hand  that  wrote  is  low. 

Erect  they  stood  and,  festally  arrayed, 
Serenely  waited  the  transforming  hour. 
Softly  as  Hyacinth  slid  from  youth  to  flower, 
Or  the  shade  of  Cyparis  to  a  cypress  shade. 

They  wept  not  for  the  lost  Ionian  days, 
Nor  liberty,  nor  household  love  and  laughter. 
Nor  the  long  leaden  slumber  that  comes  after 
Life's  little  wakefulness. 

Fearless  they  sought  the  land  no  sunsets  see. 
Whence  our  weak  pride  shrinks  back,  and  would  return. 
Knowing  a  pinch  of  ashes  in  an  urn 
Henceforth  our  garden  and  our  house  shall  be. 

Young  men,  my  brothers,  you  whose  morning  skies 
I  have  seen  the  deathly  lassitude  invade, 

[    12    ] 


JEA.V  COCTEAU 

Oh,  how  you  suffered!  How  you  were  afraid! 

What  death-damp  hands  you  locked  about  your  eyes! 

You,  so  insatiably  athirst  to  spend 

The  young  desires  in  your  hearts  abloom. 

How  could  you  think  the  desert  was  your  doom, 

The  waterless  fountain  and  the  endless  end  ? 

You  yearned  not  for  the  face  of  love,  grown  dim, 
But  only  fought  your  anguished  bones  to  wrest 
From  the  Black  Angel  crouched  upon  your  breast, 
Who  scanned  you  ere  he  led  you  down  with  him. 

Jean  Cocteau 


[   i.^  1 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 


A  MESSAGE 

This  is  our  gift  to  the  Homeless. 

What  shall  it  bear  from  me 
Safe  in  a  land  that  prospers 

Girded  by  leagues  of  sea? — 
Tear  moistened  words  of  pity, 

Bountiful  sympathy. 

Clearly  we  see  the  picture, 

Horror  has  fixed  our  eyes. 
Fighting  to  guard  its  hearthstones 

A  nation  mangled  lies. 
Fire  has  charred  its  beauty. 

Murder  has  stilled  its  cries; 

And  truths  we  love  and  cherish 

Hang  in  the  trembling  scale. 
If  you  win,  we  win  by  proxy. 

If  you  fail,  we  are  doomed  to  fail. 
The  world  is  beset  by  a  monster. 

Yet  we  watch  to  see  who  shall  prevail. 

Our  souls  are  racked  and  quickened. 

But  prudence  counsels  no. 
So  we  lavish  our  gold  and* pity 

And  wait  to  see  how  it  will  go, — 
This  pivotal  war  of  the  ages 

With  its  heartrending  ebb  and  flow. 


:  ^4  2 


ROBERT  GRANT 

For  ever  there  comes  the  moment 
When  destiny  bids  "choose." 

By  the  edge  of  the  sword  men  perish. 
By  selfishness  all  they  lose. 

So  Belgium  stands  transfigured 
As  the  one  who  did  not  refuse. 

Robert  Grant 


C   15  ] 


JhigusI,   1915 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 


CRY  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

Instigator  of  the  ruin  — 

Whichsoever  thou  mayst  be 
Of  the  mastering  minds  of  Europe 

That  contrived  our  misery — 
Hear  the  wormwood-worded  greeting 
From  each  city,  shore,  and  lea 
Of  thy  victims: 
"  Enemy,  all  hail  to  thee  !  " 

Yea:  "All  hail!"  we  grimly  shout  thee 

That  wast  author,  fount,  and  head 
Of  these  wounds,  whoever  proven 
When  our  times  are  throughly  read. 
"  May  thy  dearest  ones  be  blighted 
And  forsaken,"  be  it  said 
By  thy  victims, 
"And  thy  children  beg  their  bread!" 

Nay:  too  much  the  malediction. — 

Rather  let  this  thing  befall 
In  the  unfurling  of  the  future, 

On  the  night  when  comes  thy  call: 
That  compassion  dew  thy  pillow 

And  absorb  thy  senses  all 
For  thy  victims. 

Till  death  dark  thee  with  his  pall. 

Thomas  Hardy 


:  16  ] 


JJCQUES-ÉMILE  BLANCHE 
PORTRAIT  OF  THOMAS  HARDY 

FROM   A   PHOTOGRAPH  OF  THE  ORIGINAL   PAINTING 


fVILLIAM  DEAN  HOIFELLS 


THE  LITTLE  CHILDREN 

Suffer  little  children  to  come  unto  me," 
Christ  said,  and  answering  with  infernal  glee, 
"Take  them  !  "the  arch-fiend  scoffed,  and  from  the  tottering  walls 
Of  their  wrecked  homes,  and  from  the  cattle's  stalls. 
And  the  dogs'  kennels,  and  the  cold 
Of  the  waste  fields,  and  from  the  hapless  hold 
Of  their  dead  mothers'  arms,  famished  and  bare. 
And  maimed  by  shot  and  shell, 
The  master-spirit  of  hell 

Caught  them  up,  and  through  the  shuddering  air 
Of  the  hope-forsaken  world 
The  little  ones  he  hurled. 
Mocking  that  Pity  in  his  pitiless  might — 
The  Anti-Christ  of  Schrecklickeit. 

\V.  D.  HOVVELLS 


C  n  ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 


EPITAPHE 

C«i-GÎT  un  tel,  mort  pour  la  France  et  qui,  vivant, 
Poussait  sa  voiturette  à  travers  les  villages 
Pour  vendre  un  peu  de  fil,  de  sel  ou  de  fromage. 
Sous  les  portails  d'azur  aux  feuillages  mouvants. 

Il  a  gagné  son  pain  comme  au  Commandement 
Que  donne  aux  hommes  Dieu  dans  le  beau  Livre  sage. 
Puis,  un  jour,  sur  sa  tête  a  crevé  le  nuage 
Que  lance  l'orageux  canon  de  l'Allemand. 

Ce  héros,  dans  l'éclair  qui  délivra  son  âme. 
Aura  vu  tout  en  noir  ses  enfants  et  sa  femme 
Contemplants  anxieux  son  pauvre  gagne-pain: 

Ce  chariot  plus  beau  que  n'est  celui  de  l'Ourse 
Et  qu'il  a  fait  rouler  pendant  la  dure  course 
Qui  sur  terre  commence  un  céleste  destin. 

Francis  Jammes 


Or/hez,  29  Juillet  1915 

[    18   ^ 


FRANCIS  JAMMES 


AN  EPITAPH 
[translation  ] 

Herf.  such  an  one  lies  dead  for  France.  His  trade 
To  push  a  barrow  stocked  with  thread,  cheese,  salt 
From  town  to  town,  under  the  azure  vault, 
Through  endless  corridors  of  rustling  shade. 
True  to  the  sacred  law  of  toil,  he  made 
His  humble  living  as  the  Book  commands. 
Till  suddenly  there  burst  upon  his  lands 
The  thunder  of  the  German  cannonade. 

Poor  hero!  In  the  flash  that  smote  him  dead 
He  saw  his  wife  and  children  all  in  black 
Weeping  about  the  cart  tiiat  earned  their  bread — 
The  cart  that,  by  his  passionate  impulse  sped 
On  immortality's  celestial  track, 
Shone  brighter  than  the  Wain  above  his  head. 

Francis  Jam.mes 


:  19  : 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 


IN  SLEEP 

I  DREAMT  (no  "dream"  awake — a  dream  indeed) 
A  wrathful  man  was  talking  in  the  Park: 
"  Where  are  the  Higher  Powers  who  know  our  need, 
Yet  leave  us  in  the  dark? 

"There  are  no  Higher  Powers;  there  is  no  heart 
In  God,  no  love" — his  oratory  here, 
Taking  the  paupers'  and  the  cripples'  part, 
"Was  broken  by  a  tear. 

And  next  it  seemed  that  One  who  did  invent 
Compassion,  who  alone  created  pity, 
Walked,  as  though  called,  and  hastened  as  He  went 
Out  from  the  muttering  city  ; 

Threaded  the  little  crowd,  trod  the  brown  grass. 
Bent  o'er  the  speaker  close,  saw  the  tear  rise. 
And  saw  Himself,  as  one  looks  in  a  glass, 
In  those  impassioned  eyes. 

Alice  Meynell 


[  20  J 


COMTESSE  DE  NOAILLES 


NOS  MORTS 

Astres  qui  regardez  les  mondes  où  nous  sommes, 
Pure  armée  au  repos  dans  la  hauteur  des  deux, 
Campement  éternel,  léger,  silencieux. 
Que  pensez-vous  de  voir  s'anéantir  les  hommes? 
A  n'être  pas  sublime  aucun  ne  condescend, 
Comme  un  cri  vers  la  nue  on  voit  jaillir  leur  sang 
Qui  sur  nos  cœurs  contrits  lentement  se  rabaisse. 
—  Morts  divins,  portez-nous  un  plausible  secours! 
Notre  douleur  n'est  pas  la  sœur  de  votre  ivresse. 
Vous  mourez!  Concevez  que  c'est  un  poids  trop  lourd 
Pour  ceux  qui  dans  leur  grave  et  brûlante  tristesse 
Ont  toujours  confondu  la  Vie  avec  l'Amour. 

Comtesse  de  Noailles 


OUR  DEAD 

[translation] 

Stars  that  behold  our  world  upon  its  way. 
Pure  legions  camped  upon  the  plains  of  night. 
Mute  watchful  hosts  of  heaven,  wliat  must  you  say 
When  men  destroy  each  other  in  their  might? 
Upon  their  deadly  race  each  runner  starts. 
Nor  one  but  will  his  brothers  all  outrun  ! 
Ah,  see  their  blood  jet  upward  to  the  sun 
Like  living  fountains  refluent  on  our  hearts! 
O  dead  divinely  for  so  great  a  faith, 

[    2,     3 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

Help  us,  whose  agony  is  but  begun. 

For  bitterly  we  yield  you  up  to  death. 

We  who  had  dreamed  that  Life  and  Love  were  one. 

Comtesse  de  Noailles 


[     22     ] 


CLAUDE  MONET 
LANDSCAPE 

FROM   AN   EARLY  COLOURED  PASTEL 


I 


( 


^ 


I'rt 


JOSEPHINE  PRESTON  PEA  BOD  r 


TWO  SONGS  OF  A  YEAR 

I9l4-iyi5 

I 

CHILDREN'S  KISSES 

So;  it  is  nightfall  then. 

The  valley  flush 

That  beckoned  home  the  way  for  herds  and  men 

Is  hardly  spent: 

Down  the  bright  pathway  winds,  through  veils  of  hush 

And  wonderment. 

Unuttered  yet  the  chime 

That  tells  of  folding-time; 

Hardly  the  sun  has  set; — 

The  trees  are  sweetly  troubled  with  bright  words 

From  new-alighted  birds. 

And  yet,  .  .  . 

Here,  round  my  neck,  are  come  to  cling  and  twine. 

The  arms,  the  folding  arms,  close,  close  and  fain. 

All  mine! — 

I  pleaded  to,  in  vain, 

I  reached  for,  only  to  their  dimpled  scorning, 

Down  the  blue  halls  of  morning;— 

Where  all  things  else  could  lure  them  on  and  on, 

Now  here,  now  gone, 

From  bush  to  bush,  from  beckoning  bough  to  bough, 

W^ith  bird-calls  of  Come  Hither! — 

Ah,  but  now  .  .  . 

Now  it  is  dusk. — And  from  his  heaven  of  mirth, 

C    2'3    ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

A  wilding  skylark  sudden  dropt  to  earth 

Along  the  last  low  sunbeam  yellow-moted, — 

Athrob  with  joy, — 

There  pushes  here,  a  little  golden  Boy, 

Still  gazing  with  great  eyes: 

And  wonder-wise, 

All  fragrancy,  all  valor  silver-throated, 

My  daughterling,  my  swan. 

My  Alison. 

Closer  than  homing  lambs  against  the  bars 
At  folding-time,  that  crowd,  all  mother-warm. 
They  crowd,  they  cling,  they  wreathe;— 
And  thick  as  sparkles  of  the  thronging  stars, 
Their  kisses  swarm. 

O  Rose  of  Being  at  whose  heart  I  breathe. 

Fold  over,  hold  me  fast 

In  the  dim  Eden  of  a  blinding  kiss. 

And  lightning  heart's  desire,  be  still  at  last. 

Heart  can  no  more, — 

Life  can  no  more 

Than  this. 


[   24  3 


JOSEPHINE  PRESTON  PEA  BODY 

11 
THE  SANS-FOYER 

Love,  that  Love  cannot  share, — 

Now  turn  to  air! 
And  fade  to  ashes,  O  my  daily  bread, 

Save  only  if  you  may 

Bless  you,  to  be  the  stay 
Of  the  uncomforted. 

Behold,  you  far-off  lights, — 

From  smoke-veiled  heights, 

If  there  be  dwelling  in  our  wilderness  ! 
For  Love  the  refugee, 
No  stronghold  can  there  be, — 

No  shelter  more,  while  these  go  shelterless. 

Love  hath  no  home,  beside 

His  own  two  arms  spread  wide;  — 
The  only  home,  among  all  walls  that  are  : 

So  there  may  come  to  cling. 

Some  yet  forlomer  thing 
Feeling  its  way,  along  this  blackened  star. 

Josephine  Preston  Peabody 


C    2.5    ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 


RAIN  IN  BELGIUM 

1  HE  heavy  rain  falls  down,  falls  down. 
On  city  streets  whence  all  have  fled. 
Where  tottering  ruins  skyward  frown 
Above  the  staring  silent  dead. 
Here  shall  ye  raise  your  Kaiser's  throne. 
Stained  with  the  blood  for  freedom  shed. 

Here  where  men  choked  for  breath  in  vain 
Who  in  fair  fight  had  all  withstood. 
Here  on  this  poison-haunted  plain, 
Made  rich  with  babes'  and  women's  blood. 
Here  shall  ye  plant  your  German  grain, 
Here  shall  ye  reap  your  children's  food. 

The  harvest  ripens — Reaper  come! 
Bring  children  singing  Songs  of  Hate 
Taught  by  the  mother  in  the  home  — 
Fit  comrade  she  for  such  a  mate. 
Soon  shall  ye  reap  what  ye  have  sown  ; 
God's  mills  grind  thoroughly  though  late. 

The  heavy  rain  beats  down,  beats  down; 
I  hear  in  it  the  tramp  of  Fate! 

LiLLA  Cabot  Perry 


[  26;] 


CHARLES  DANA  GIBSON 
"THE  GIRL  HE  LEFT  BEHIND  HIM" 

FROM  A  PEN-AND-INK  SKETCH 


HENRI  DE  REGNIER 


L'EXILE 

O  DEUIL  de  ne  pouvoir  emporter  sur  la  mer 

Dans  l'écume  salée  et  dans  le  vent  amer. 

L'épi  de  son  labeur  et  le  fruit  de  sa  treille, 

Ni  la  rose  que  l'aurore  fait  plus  vermeille 

Ni  rien  de  tout  de  ce  qui,  selon  chaque  saison. 

Pare  divinement  le  seuil  de  la  maison  ! 

Mais,  puisque  mon  foyer  n'est  plus  qu'un  peu  de  cendre, 

Et  que,  dans  mon  jardin,  je  ne  dois  plus  entendre 

Sur  les  arbres  chanter  les  oiseaux  du  printemps; 

Que  nul  ne  reviendra  de  tous  ceux  que  j'attends, 

S'abriter  sous  le  toit  où  nichaient  les  colombes, 

Adieu  donc,  doux  pays  où  nous  avions  nos  tombes, 

Où  nous  devions,  à  l'heure  où  se  ferment  les  yeux, 

Nous  endormir  auprès  du  sommeil  des  aïeux! 

Nous  partons.  Ne  nous  pleurez  pas,  tendres  fontaines. 

Terre  que  nous  quittons  pour  des  terres  lointaines, 

O  toi  que  le  brutal  talon  du  conquérant 

A  foulée  et  qu'au  loin,  de  sa  lueur  de  sang, 

Empourpre  la  bataille  et  rougit  l'incendie! 

Qu'un  barbare  vainqueur  nous  chasse  et  qu'il  châtie 

En  nous  le  saint  amour  que  nous  avons  pour  toi. 

C'est  bien.  La  force  pour  un  jour,  prime  le  droit, 

Mais  l'exil  qu'on  subit  pour  ta  cause.  Justice, 

Laisse  au  destin  vengeur  le  temps  qu'il  s'accomplisse. 

Nous  reviendrons.  Et  soit  que  nous  passions  la  mer 

Parmi  l'embrun  cinglant  et  dans  le  vent  amer, 

Soit  que  le  sort  cruel  rudement  nous  disperse, 

Troupeau  errant,  sous  la  rafale  ou  sous  l'averse, 

C   27   ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

Ne  nous  plains  pas,  cher  hôte,  en  nous  tendant  la  main. 

Car  n'est-il  pas  pour  toi  un  étranger  divin 

Celui  qui,  le  front  haut  et  les  yeux  pleins  de  flamme, 

A  quitté  sa  maison  pour  fuir  un  joug  infâme 

Et  dont  le  fier  genou  n'a  pas  voulu  ployer 

Et  qui,  pauvre,  exilé,  sans  pain  et  sans  foyer, 

Sent  monter,  de  son  cœur  à  sa  face  pâlie. 

Ce  même  sang  sacré  que  saigne  la  Patrie. 

Henri  de  Régnier 

de  r Académie  Française 


THE  EXILE 

[translation] 

Jditter  our  fate,  that  may  not  bear  away 

On  the  harsh  winds  and  through  the  alien  spray 

Sheaves  of  our  fields  and  fruit  from  the  warm  wall, 

The  rose  that  reddens  at  the  morning's  call, 

Nor  aught  of  all  wherewith  the  turning  year 

Our  doorway  garlanded,  from  green  to  sere.  .  .  . 

But  since  the  ash  is  cold  upon  the  hearth. 

And  dumb  the  birds  in  garden  and  in  garth. 

Since  none  shall  come  again,  of  all  our  loves, 

Back  to  this  roof  that  crooned  with  nesting  doves. 

Now  let  us  bid  farewell  to  all  our  dead. 

And  that  dear  corner  of  earth  where  they  are  laid. 

And  where  in  turn  it  had  been  good  to  lay 

Our  kindred  heads  on  the  appointed  day. 

Weep  not,  O  springs  and  fountains,  that  we  go. 
And  thou,  dear  earth,  the  earth  our  footsteps  know, 

C    28    ] 


HENRI  DE  REGNIER 

Weep  not,  thou  desecrated,  shamed  and  rent. 
Consumed  with  fire  and  with  blood-shed  spent. 
Small  strength  have  they  that  hunt  us  from  thy  fold 
To  loosen  love's  indissoluble  hold, 
And  brighter  than  the  flames  about  thy  pyre 
Our  exiled  faith  shall  spring  for  thee,  and  higher. 
We  shall  return.  Let  Time  reverse  the  glass. 
Homeless  and  scattered  from  thy  face  we  pass. 
Through  rain  and  tempest  flying  from  our  doors. 
On  seas  unfriendly  swept  to  stranger  shores. 
But,  O  you  friends  unknown  that  wait  us  there. 
We  ask  no  pity,  though  your  bread  we  share, 
ï'or  he  who,  flying  from  the  fate  of  slaves 
With  brow  indignant  and  with  empty  hand, 
Has  left  his  house,  his  country  and  his  graves, 
Comes  like  a  Pilgrim  from  a  Holy  Land. 
Receive  him  thus,  if  in  his  blood  there  be 
One  drop  of  Belgium's  immortahty. 

Henri  de  Régnier 

de  r Académie  Française 


C    2C,    ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 


HORREUR  ET  BEAUTÉ 

OABREUR  de  mains  d'enfants  qui  demandaient  du  pain. 
Brûleur  de  basilique  et  de  bibliothèque. 
Geste  obscène,  œil  sanglant,  front  d'anthropopithèque, 
L'homme  ne  s'est  jamais  plus  hideusement  peint. 

Mais  Roncevaux  n'a  rien  de  plus  beau,  sous  son  Pin,. 
Rien  de  plus  pur,  sous  son  Laurier,  la  fable  Grecque, 
Que  ce  jeune  Monarque  et  son  vieil  Archevêque: 
C'est  Achille  et  Nestor,  c'est  Roland  et  Turpin. 

Roi,  d'un  juste  reflux  puissions-nous  voir  la  vague! 
Et  toi,  puisque  ta  main  éleva  dans  sa  bague 
Le  seul  reflet  de  ciel  qui  bénit  cet  Enfer, 

Que  la  pourpre  sur  toi  soit  plus  cardinalice. 
Prêtre  !  et  que  de  la  Croix  qui  n'était  pas  de  Fer 
Un  Christ  plus  abondant  coule  dans  ton  calice! 

Edmond  Rostand 


C  30  ] 


EDMOND  ROSTAJVD 
HORROR  AND  BEAUTY 

[  TRANSLATION'  ] 

Gashed  hands  of  children  who  cry  out  for  bread — 
While  as  the  flames  from  sacred  places  rise 

The  Blonde  Beast,  hideous,  with  blood-shot  eyes 
And  obscene  gesture  mutilates  the  dead  — 

But  neither  Roncesvalles  where  Roland  bled 
With  Turpin,  nor  Greek  deeds  of  high  emprise 

Can  to  a  pitch  of  purer  beauty  rise 

Than  the  Young  King,  the  Priest,  unconqueréd. 

Oh  King,  soon  all  thy  foes  may'st  thou  repel! 

And  thou,  High-Priest,  from  whose  ring,  raised  to  men, 
Shone  the  one  gleam  of  Heaven  in  that  Hell, 

May  thy  empurpled  vestments  so  avail 

That  from  the  Cross ^ not  made  of  Iron  then  — 
A  richer  Christ  glow  in  thy  holy  grail. 

Edmond  Rostand 


Transi  filed  by  Wnllcr  V.  R.  Ikrry 

L  3.  ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

THE  UNDERGRADUATE  KILLED  IN  BATTLE 

Sweet  as  the  lawn  beneath  his  sandalled  tread 
Or  the  scarce  rippled  stream  beneath  his  oar, 
For  its  still,  channelled  current  constant  more. 
His  life  was,  and  the  few  blithe  words  he  said. 

One  or  two  poets  read  he,  and  reread; 
One  or  two  friends  in  boyish  ardour  wore 
Next  to  his  heart,  incurious  of  the  lore 
Dodonian  woods  might  murmur  o'er  his  head. 

Ah,  demons  of  the  whirlwind,  have  a  care 
What,  trumpeting  your  triumphs,  ye  undo! 
The  eartii  once  won,  begins  your  long  despair 
That  never,  never  is  his  bliss  for  you. 
He  breathed  betimes  this  clement  island  air 
And  in  unwitting  lordship  saw  the  blue. 

George  Santayana 


Oxford,  Mgust,  1915 

C   32   ] 


WALTER  GAY 
INTERIOR 

FROM   AN   ORIGINAL   WATER-COLOUR   SKETCH 


EDITH  M.  THOMAS 


THE  CHILDREN  AND  THE  FLAG 

T/ie  little  children  in  my  country  kiss  the  American  flag. 

^^    MADAME  VANDERVELDE 

What  of  those  children  over  the  sea 

Tliat  are  beating  about  the  world's  rough  ways, 

Like  the  tender  blossoms  from  off  a  tree 

That  a  sudden  gale  in  Spring  betrays? 

The  children?  Oh,  let  them  look  for  the  sign 

Of  a  wave-borne  flag,  thou  land  of  mine! 

On  the  old  gray  sea  its  course  it  holds, 

Life  for  the  famished  is  in  its  gift.  .  .  . 

And  the  children  are  crowding  to  kiss  its  folds, 

While  the  tears  of  their  mothers  fall  free  and  swift. - 

And  what  of  the  flag  their  lips  have  pressed? 

Oh,  guard  it  for  ever — That  flag  is  blest. 

Edith  M.  Thomas 


c  33  : 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 


THE  TROUBLER  OF  TELARO 
1 

^Varm  vines  bloom  now  along  thy  rampart  steeps 

Thy  shelves  of  olives,  underclitfs  of  azure. 

And  like  a  lizard  of  the  red  rock  sleeps 

The  wrinkled  Tuscan  sea,  panting  for  pleasure. 

Nets,  too,  festooned  about  thine  elfin  port, 

Telaro,  in  the  Etrurian  mountain's  side, 

Heavings  of  golden  luggers  scarce  distort 

The  image  of  thy  belfry  where  they  ride. 

But  thee,  Telaro,  on  a  night  long  gone 

That  grey  and  holy  tower  upon  the  mole 

Suddenly  summoned,  while  yet  lightnings  shone 

And  hard  gale  lingered,  with  a  ceaseless  toll 

That  choked,  with  its  disastrous  monotone, 

All  the  narrow  channels  of  the  hamlet's  soul. 


For  what  despair,  fire,  shipwreck,  treachery? 

Was  it  for  threat  that  from  the  macchia  sprang 

For  Genoa's  feud,  the  oppressor's  piracy. 

Or  the  Falcon  of  Sarzana  that  it  rang  ? 

Was  the  boat-guild's  silver  plundered  ?  Blood  should  pay. 

Hardwon  the  footing  of  the  fishers'  clan 

The  sea-cloud-watchers.  —  Loud  above  the  spray 

The  maddening  iron  cry,  the  appeal  of  man. 

Washed  through  the  torchless  midnight  on  and  on. 

Are  not  enough  the  jeopardies  of  day? 

Riot  arose — fear's  Self  began  the  fray: 

[    34   ] 


HERBERT  TRENCH 

But  the  tower  proved  empty.  By  the  lightning's  ray 
They  found  no  luiman  ringer  in  the  room.  .  .  . 
The  bell-rope  quivered  out  in  the  sea-spume.  .  .  , 


A  creature  fierce,  soft,  witless  of  itself, 

A  morbid  mouth,  circled  by  writhing  arms. 

By  its  own  grasp  entangled  on  that  shelf. 

Had  dragged  the  rope  and  spread  the  death-alarms; 

Insensitive,  light-forgotten,  up  from  slime, 

From  shelter  betwixt  rocks,  issuing  for  prey 

Disguised,  had  used  man's  language  of  dismay. 

The  spawn  of  perished  times  had  late  in  time 

Emerged,  and  griefs  upon  man's  grief  imposed 

Incalculable. 

But  the  fishers  closed 
The  blind  mouth,  and  cut  off  the  suckers  cold. 
Two  thousand  fathoms  the  disturber  rolled 
From  trough  to  trough  into  the  gulf  Tyrrhene; 
And  fear  sank  with  it  back  into  its  night  obscene. 

Herbert  Trench 


C   35   ] 


THEO  K4N  RTSSELBERGHE 
PORTRAIT  OF  EMILE  VERHAEREN 

FROM  A  PENCIL  DRAWING 


fl^ 


^^ 


\ 


^^ULtJi^"^ 


^ 


H 


■^ 


Août  191^ 


EMILE  VERHAEREN 

LE  PRINTEMPS  DE  1915 

1  u  me  disais  de  ta  voix  douce, 
Tu  me  disais  en  insistant: 

—  Y  a-t-il  eiicor  un  Printemps 
Et  les  feuilles  repoussent-elles? 

La  guerre  accapare  le  ciel 
Les  eaux,  les  monts,  les  bois,  la  terre: 
Où  sont  les  fleurs  couleur  de  miel 
Pour  les  abeilles  volontaires? 

Où  sont  les  pousses  des  roncerois 
Et  les  boutons  des  anémones? 
Où  sont  les  flûtes  dans  les  bois 
Des  oiseaux  sombres  aux  becs  jaunes? 

—  Hélas!  plus  n'est  de  floraison 
Que  cell^  des  feux  dans  l'espace: 
Bouquet  de  rage  et  de  menace 
S'éparpillant  sur  l'horizon. 

Plus* n'est,  hélas  !  de  splendeur  rouge 
Que  celle,  hélas!  des  boulets  fous 
Éclaboussant  de  larges  coups 
Clochers,  hameaux,  fermes  et  bouges. 

C'est  le  printemps  de  ce  temps-ci: 
Le  vent  répand  de  plaine  en  plaine. 


:  37  ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

Là-bas,  ces  feuillaisons  de  haine; 
C'est  la  terreur  de  ce  temps-ci. 

Emile  Verhaeren 

Sainl-CXoud,  le  31  Juillet  1915 


THE  NEW  SPRING 

[translation] 

OADLY  your  dear  voice  said: 
"  Is  the  old  spring-time  dead. 
And  shall  we  never  see 
New  leaves  upon  the  tree? 

"  Shall  the  black  wings  of  war 
Blot  out  sun,  moon  and  star, 
And  never  a  bud  unfold 
To  the  bee  its  secret  gold? 

"Where  are  the  wind-flowers  streaked, 
And  the  wayward  bramble  shoots. 
And  the  black-birds  yellow-beaked 
With  a  note  like  woodland  flutes?" 

No  flower  shall  bloom  this  year 
But  the  wild  flame  of  fear 
Wreathing  the  evil  night 
With  burst  of  deadly  light. 


c  38  :\ 


EMILE  rERIIAEREN 

No  splendour  of  petals  red 
But  that  wliich  the  cannon  shed, 
Raining  their  death-bloom  down 
On  farm  and  tower  and  town. 

This  is  the  scarlet  doom 
By  the  wild  sea-winds  hurled 
Over  a  land  of  gloom, 
Over  a  grave-strewn  world. 

Emile  Verhaeren 


[  3.0  : 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 


1915 

1  HOUGH  desolation  stain  their  foiled  advance, 

In  ashen  ruins  hearth-stones  linger  whole: 
Do  what  they  may,  they  cannot  master  France; 
Do  what  they  can,  they  cannot  quell  the  soul. 

Barrett  Wendell 


C  40  ] 


EDITH  WHARTON 


THE  TRYST 

I  SAID  to  the  woman:  Whence  do  you  come, 
With  your  bundle  in  your  hand? 
She  said:  In  the  North  I  made  my  home, 
Where  slow  streams  fatten  the  fruitful  loam, 
And  the  endless  wheat-fields  run  like  foam 
To  the  edge  of  the  endless  sand. 

I  said  :  What  look  have  your  houses  there, 

And  the  rivers  that  glass  your  sky? 

Do  the  steeples  that  call  your  people  to  prayer 

Lift  fretted  fronts  to  the  silver  air, 

And  the  stones  of  your  streets,  are  they  washed  and  fair 

W^hen  the  Sunday  folk  go  by? 

My  house  is  ill  to  find,  she  said, 

For  it  has  no  roof  but  the  sky  ; 

The  tongue  is  torn  from  the  steeple-head, 

The  streets  are  foul  with  the  slime  of  the  dead. 

And  all  the  rivers  run  poison-red 

With  the  bodies  drifting  by. 

I  said:  Is  there  none  to  come  at  your  call 
In  all  this  throng  astray? 
They  shot  my  husband  against  a  wall. 
And  my  child  (she  said),  too  little  to  crawl, 
Held  up  its  hands  to  catch  the  ball 
When  the  gun-muzzle  turned  its  way. 


C    41    -] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

I  said  :  There  are  countries  far  from  here 

Where  the  friendly  church-bells  call, 

And  fields  where  the  rivers  run  cool  and  clear, 

And  streets  where  the  weary  may  walk  without  fear, 

And  a  quiet  bed,  with  a  green  tree  near, 

To  sleep  at  the  end  of  it  all. 

She  answered:  Your  land  is  too  remote, 

And  what  if  I  chanced  to  roam 

When  the  bells  fly  back  to  the  steeples'  throat, 

And  the  sky  with  banners  is  all  afloat. 

And  the  streets  of  my  city  rock  like  a  boat 

With  the  tramp  of  her  men  come  home? 

I  shall  crouch  by  the  door  till  the  bolt  is  down, 

And  then  go  in  to  my  dead. 

Where  my  husband  fell  I  will  put  a  stone, 

And  mother  a  child  instead  of  my  own. 

And  stand  and  laugh  on  my  bare  hearth-stone 

When  the  King  rides  by,  she  said. 

Edith  Wharton 


Paris,  August  27th,  1915 

C   42   H 


p.  A.  J.  DAGNAN-BOUVERET 
BRITTANY  WOMAN 

FROM  A  DRAWING  IN  COLOURED  CRAYONS 


-f 


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MARGARET  L.  WOODS 

FINISTERRE 

O  THAT  on  some  forsaken  strand, 
Lone  ending  of  a  lonely  land, 
On  such  an  eve  we  two  were  lying, 
To  hear  the  quiet  water  sighing 
And  feel  the  coolness  of  the  sand. 

A  red  and  broken  moon  would  grow 
Out  of  the  dusk  and  even  so 
As  here  to-night  the  street  she  faces, 
Between  the  half-distinguished  spaces 
Of  sea  and  sky  would  burn  and  go. 

The  moon  would  go  and  overhead, 
Like  tapers  lighted  o'er  the  dead. 
Star  after  silver  star  would  glimmer, 
The  lonely  night  grow  calmer,  dimmer, 
The  quiet  sea  sink  in  its  bed. 

We,  at  the  end  of  Time  and  Fate, 
Might  unconcerned  with  love  or  hate 
As  the  sea's  voices,  talk  together. 
Wherefore  we  went  apart  and  whither. 
And  all  the  exiled  years  relate. 

Thus  were  life's  grey  chance-' ravelled  sleave' 
Outspread,  we  something  might  perceive 
Which  never  would  to  chance  surrender, 
But  through  the  tangled  woof  its  slender 
Golden,  elusive  pattern  weave. 

:  43  ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

Then  while  the  great  stars  larger  shone 
Leaned  on  the  sea,  and  drew  thereon 
Faint  paths  of  light,  across  them  faring 
Might  steal  the  ship  that  comes  for  bearing 
Sore- wounded  souls  to  Avalon. 

Margaret  L.  Woods 


C   44   H 


W.  B.  TEATS 


A  REASON  FOR  KEEPING  SILENT 

I  THINK  it  better  that  at  times  like  these 
We  poets  keep  our  mouths  shut,  for  in  truth 
We  have  no  gift  to  set  a  statesman  right; 
He's  had  enough  of  meddling  who  can  please 
A  young  girl  in  the  indolence  of  her  youth 
Or  an  old  man  upon  a  winter's  night. 

W.  B.  Yeats 


c  4.5  : 


JACQUES-ÉMILE  BLANCHE 
PORTRAIT  OF  IGOR  STRAVINSKY 

FROM  A  STUDY   IN  OILS 


MUSICAL  SCORE 
IGOR  STRAVINSKY 

SOUVENIR   d'une   MARCHE  BOCHE 


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PORTRAIT  OF  VINCENT  D'INDY 

FROM   A    PHOTOGRAPH  OF  THE  ORIGINAL  PAINTING 


MUSICAL  SCORE 
VINCENT  D'INDT 

LA  LÉGENDE  DE  SAINT  CHRISTOPHE 

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CONTRIBUTORS  OF  PROSE 

MAURICE  BARRÉS 

SARAH   BERNHARDT 

PAUL  BOURGET 

JOSEPH  CONRAD 

ELEONORA  DUSE 

JOHN   GALSWORTHY 

EDMUND  GOSSE 

PAUL  HERVIEU 

GENERAL  HUMBERT 

HENRY  JAMES 

MAURICE  MAETERLINCK 

EDWARD  SANDFORD   MARTIN 

PAUL  ELMER   MORE 

AGNES  REPPLIER 

ANDRÉ  SAURÈS 

MRS.  HUMPHRY  WARD 


LES  FRÈRES 

Je  n'aime  pas  raconter  cette  histoire,  dit  le  Général,  parce  que  à  chaque 
fois,  c'est  bête,  je  pleure.  Mais  elle  fait  aimer  la  France.  ...  Il  s'agit  de 
deux  enfants  admirablement  doues,  pleins  de  cœur  et  d'esprit  et  qu'ai- 
maient tous  ceux  qui  les  rencontraient.  Je  les  avais  connus  tout  petits. 
Quand  la  guerre  éclata,  le  plus  jeune,  François,  venait  d'être  admis  à 
Saint-Cyr.  Il  n'eut  pas  le  temps  d'y  entrer  et  avec  toute  la  promotion 
il  fut  d'emblée  nommé  sous-lieutenant.  Vous  pensez  s'il  rayonnait  de 
joie!  Dix-neuf  ans  l'épaulette  et  les  batailles!  Son  aîné  Jacques,  un  gar- 
çon de  vingt  ans,  tout  à  fait  remarquable  de  science  et  d'éloquence,  tra- 
vaillait encore  à  la  Faculté  de  Droit  dont  il  était  lauréat.  Lui  aussi  il 
partit  comme  sous-lieutenant. 

Les  deux  frères  se  retrouvèrent  dans  la  même  brigade  de  "la  division 
de  fer,"  le  plus  jeune  au  26^  de  ligne  et  l'aîné  au  27e.  Ils  cantonnaient 
dans  uu  village  dévasté  et  chaque  jour  joyeusement  se  retrouvaient, 
plaisant  à  tous  et  gagnant  par  leur  jeunesse  et  leur  amitié  une  sorte  de 
popularité  auprès  des  soldats. 

Bientôt  on  a])prit  que  le  régiment  du  Saint-Cyrien  allait  avoir  à  marcher 
et  que  ce  serait  chaud.  En  cachette  Jacques  s'en  alla  demander  au  colonel 
la  permission  de  prendre  la  place  de  son  petit  François  qu'il  trouvait  trop 
peu  préparé  pour  une  action  qui  s'annonçait  rude. 

Le  colonel  reconnut  la  générosité  de  cette  demande  mais  coupa  court 
en  disant: 

— On  ne  peut  pas  faire  passer  un  officier  d'un  corps  à  un  autre  corps. 

Le  jour  fixé  pour  l'attaque  arriva.  La  première  compagnie  à  laquelle 
appartenait  François  fut  envoyé  en  tirailleurs.  Elle  fut  fauchée.  Une 
autre  suivit.  Et  puis  une  autre  encore.  Leurs  ailes  durent  se  replier  en 
laissant  sur  le  terrain  leurs  morts  et  une  partie  de  leurs  blessés.  Le  petit 
sous-lieutenant  n'était  pas  de  ceux  qui  revinrent. 

Le  surlendemain  nous  reprîmes  l'offensive.  L'aîné  en  enlevant  avec 
son  régiment  les  tranchées  allemandes,  passa  auprès  du  corps  de  son  pe- 

C  59  ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

tit  François  tout  criblé  de  balles.  Un  peu  plus  loin  il  reçut  une  blessure 
à  l'épaule. 

Son  capitaine  lui  ordonna  d'aller  se  faire  panser.  Il  refusa,  continua  et 
fut  blessé  d'une  balle  dans  la  tête. 

Les  corps  furent  ramassés  et  ramenés  dans  les  ruines  du  village.  Les 
sapeurs  du  26^  dirent  alors: 

— On  n'enterrera  pas  ce  bon  petit  sous-lieutenant  sans  un  cercueil. 
Nous  allons  lui  en  faire  un. 

Ils  se  mirent  à  scier  et  à  clouer. 

Ceux  du  27e  dirent  alors: 

— Il  ne  faut  pas  traiter  différemment  les  deux  frères.  Nous  allons,  nous 
aussi,  faire  un  cercueil  pour  notre  lieutenant. 

Au  soir,  on  se  préparait  à  les  enterrer  côte  à  côte  quand  une  vieille 
femme  éleva  la  voix. 

C'était  une  vieille  si  pauvre  qu'elle  avait  obstinément  refusé  d'aban- 
donner le  village.  "J'aime  mieux  mourir  ici,"  avait-elle  dit.  On  l'avait 
laissée.  Elle  gîtait  misérablement  dans  sa  cabane  sur  la  paille  et  n'avait 
pas  d'autre  nourriture  que  celle  que  lui  donnaient  les  soldats.  Quand  elle 
vit  les  deux  jeunes  cadavres  et  les  préparatifs,  elle  dit: 

—  Attendez  un  instant  avant  de  les  enfermer.  Je  vais  chercher  quelque 
chose. 

Elle  alla  fouiller  la  paille  sur  laquelle  elle  couchait  et  en  tira  le  drap 
qu'elle  gardait  pour  sa  sépulture.  Et  revenant: 

— On  n'enfermera  pas,  dit-elle,  ces  beaux  garçons  le  visage  contre  les 
planches.  Je  veux  les  ensevelir. 

Elle  coupa  la  toile  en  deux  et  les  mit  chacun  dans  son  suaire,  puis  elle 
leur  posa  un  baiser  sur  le  front,  en  disant  chaque  fois: 

— Pour  la  mère,  mon  cher  enfant. 


Nous  nous  tûmes  quand  le  Général  eut  ainsi  parlé  et  il  n'était  pas  le 

[  60  : 


MAURICE  BARRES 

seul  à  avoir  des  larmes  dans  les  yeux.  Une  prière  d'amour  se  fonnait 
dans  nos  cœurs  pour  la  France. 

Maurice  Barrks 

de  r Académie  Française 
1915 


THE  BROTHERS 

[translation  ] 

I  'm  not  fond  of  telling  this  story,  said  the  General,  because  each  time, 
like  the  old  fool  I  am,  it  brings  tears  to  my  eyes  .  .  .  but  the  best  of 
France  is  in  it. 

It's  about  two  boys,  astonishingly  gifted,  full  of  heart  and  brains,  that 
nobody  could  meet  without  liking.  I  knew  them  when  they  were  tiny 
little  fellows.  At  the  time  war  broke  out,  the  younger  one,  François,  had 
just  passed  his  examinations  for  St.  Cyr.  He  had  no  time  to  enter;  he  was 
rushed  along  in  the  wholesale  promotion  and  made  second  lieutenant 
then  and  there.  Fancy  what  it  meant  to  him — epaulettes  and  battles  at 
nineteen!  His  elder  brother,  Jacques,  a  boy  of  twenty,— a  really  remark- 
able fellow  in  his  studies,  was  hard  at  work  in  the  Law  School,  where  he 
had  taken  honors.  He  went  off  to  the  front  as  second  lieutenant,  too. 

The  two  brothers  were  thrown  together  for  the  first  time  in  the  same 
brigade  of  the  "  iron  division,"  as  it  was  called — the  younger  in  the  26th 
of  the  line,  the  other  in  the  27th.  They  were  quartered  in  a  ruined  vil- 
lage, and  each  day  they  met,  making  themselves  liked  everywhere  and 
enjoying  a  great  popularity  with  the  soldiers  on  account  of  their  youth 
and  friendliness. 

It  soon  got  round  that  the  St.  Cyr  boy's  regiment  was  going  to  get 
some  hot  fighting.  Jacques  said  nothing,  but  he  went  to  his  colonel  and 
asked  for  permission  to  take  the  place  of  his  brother,  whom  he  consid- 
ered too  little  prepared  for  what  promised  to  be  a  violent  engagement. 

c  «1  : 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

The  colonel  recognized  the  generosity  of  this  request,  but  he  cut  the 
young  man  short. 

"An  officer  can't  be  transferred  from  his  own  corps  to  another,"  he 
said. 

The  day  fixed  for  the  attack  came.  The  first  company  —  François' 
company — was  sent  ahead  to  skirmish.  It  was  simply  mowed  down. 
Another  followed,  and  then  another.  They  finally  had  to  fall  back,  leav- 
ing their  dead  and  part  of  the  wounded  on  the  field.  The  little  second 
lieutenant  was  not  among  those  who  returned. 

Two  days  later  our  men  took  the  offensive  again.  The  elder  brother, 
storming  the  German  trenches  with  his  regiment,  passed  close  by  the 
body  of  his  little  François  as  it  lay  there  all  shot  to  pieces.  A  bit  farther 
on,  a  bullet  caught  him  in  the  shoulder. 

His  captain  ordered  him  back  to  have  the  wound  dressed;  he  refused, 
kept  on,  and  was  hit  full  in  the  forehead. 

The  bodies  were  taken  up  and  carried  back  to  the  ruins  of  the  village. 
The  sappers  of  the  26th  said: 

"He  was  a  fine  fellow,  that  little  second  lieutenant.  He  shan't  go  un- 
derground without  a  coffin,  at  any  rate.  Let's  make  one  for  him." 

And  they  began  sawing  and  hammering. 

Then  the  men  of  the  27th  put  their  heads  together  and  said: 

"  There  must  be  no  difference  between  the  two  brothers.  We  might 
as  well  make  a  coffin  for  our  lieutenant,  too." 

By  nightfall,  when  they  were  ready  to  bury  the  brothers  side  by  side, 
an  old  woman  spoke  up.  She  was  a  wretched  old  creature,  so  poor  and 
broken  that  she  stubbornly  refused  to  leave  the  village.  "  I  've  lived  here, 
I'll  die  here,"  she  kept  on  saying.  She  lay  huddled  up  on  some  straw 
in  her  little  hovel,  and  her  only  food  was  the  leavings  of  the  soldiers. 
When  she  saw  the  bodies  of  the  two  lads  and  understood  what  was 
going  on,  she  said: 

"Wait  a  minute  before  you  nail  the  covers  on.  I'm  going  to  fetch 
something." 

c  62  :] 


MAURICE  BARRES 

She  hobbled  away,  fumbled  around  in  the  straw  she  slept  on,  and 
pulled  out  a  piece  of  cloth  that  she  was  keeping  for  her  shroud. 

"They  shan't  nail  those  boys  up  with  their  faces  against  the  boards. 
I  want  to  shroud  them,"  she  said. 

She  cut  the  shroud  in  two  and  wrapped  each  in  a  half  of  it.  Then  she 
kissed  each  one  of  them  on  the  forehead,  saying, 

"That's  for  your  mother,  dearie." 


No  one  spoke  when  the  General  ended.  And  he  was  not  the  only  one 
to  have  wet  eyes.  In  each  of  our  hearts  there  was  a  prayer  for  France. 

Maurice  Barrés 

Je  r Académie  Française 


1915 


c  63  : 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 


UNE  PROMESSE 

oÉCHEz  VOS  larmes,  Enfants  des  Flandres! 

Car  les  canons,  les  mitrailleuses,  les  fusils,  les  sabres  et  les  bras  n'arrê- 
teront leur  élan  que  lorsque  l'ennemi  vaincu  vous  rendra  vos  foyers  ! 

Et  ces  foyers;  nous,  les  femmes  de  France,  d'Angleterre,  de  Russie  et 
d'Italie,  nous  les  ensoleillerons. 

Sarah  Bernhardt 

1915 


A  PROMISE 

[translation] 

Children  of  Flanders,  dry  your  tears! 

For  all  the  mighty  machinery  of  war,  and  the  stout  hearts  of  brave 
men,  shall  strive  together  till  the  vanquished  foe  has  given  you  back 
your  homes! 

And  to  those  homes  made  desolate,  we,  the  women  of  France,  of  Eng- 
land, of  Russia  and  of  Italy,  will  bring  again  happiness  and  sunlight! 

Sarah  Bernhardt 


C   64   ] 


PIERRE-AUGUSTE  RENOIR 
PORTRAIT  OF  HIS  SON,  WOUNDED  IN  THE  WAR 

FROM  A  CHARCOAL  SKETCH 


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APRES  UN  AN 


Je  me  trouvais,  au  début  de  ce  mois  d'août  1915,  voyager  en  automo- 
bile dans  une  des  provinces  du  centre  de  la  France,  que  j'avais  traver- 
sée de  même,  juste  une  année  auparavant,  quand  la  mobilisation  com- 
mençante remplissait  les  routes  de  camions,  de  canons,  de  troupes  en 
marche.  Une  année!  Que  de  morts  depuis!  Mais  la  résolution  demeure 
la  même  qu'à  cette  époque  où  le  Pays  tout  entier  n'eut  qu'un  mot  d'ordre: 
'y  aller.  Non.  Rien  n'a  changé  de  cette  volonté  de  bataille.  J'entre  dans 
un  hôtel,  pour  y  déjeuner.  La  patronne,  que  je  connais  pour  m'arrêter 
là  chaque  fois  que  je  passe  par  la  petite  ville,  est  entièrement  vêtue  de 
noir.  Elle  a  perdu  son  frère  en  Alsace.  Son  mari  est  dans  un  dépôt  à  la 
veille  de  partir  au  front.  "Faites-vous  des  affaires.''"  lui  demandé-je. 
— "Pas  beaucoup.  Personne  ne  circule,  et  tous  les  mobilisés  s'en  vont.  La 
caserne  se  vide.  Encore  ce  matin — "  —  "C'est  bien  long,"  lui  dis-je, 
pour  la  tenter. — "  Oui,  monsieur,"  répond-elle,"  mais  puisqu'il  faut  çà — " 
Et  elle  recommence  d'écrire  ses  menus,  sans  une  plainte.  Dans  la  salle 
à  manger,  deux  servantes,  dont  une  aussi  tout  en  noir.  Je  la  questionne. 
Son  mari  a  été  tué  sur  l'Yser.  Son  visage  est  très  triste.  Mais  pas  une 
récrimination  non  plus.  Elle  est  comme  sa  maîtresse.  Elle  accepte  "puis- 
qu'il faut  çà."  Un  sous-officier  ouvre  la  porte.  Il  est  suivi  d'une  femme  en 
grand  deuil,  d'un  enfant  et  d'un  homme  âgé. — Sa  femme,  son  fils  et  son 
père,  ai-je  su  depuis.  Je  le  vois  de  profil,  et  j'observe  dans  son  regard 
une  fixité  qui  m'étonne.  Il  refuse  une  place  dans  le  fond,  et  marche  vers 
la  fenêtre:  "J'ai  besoin  d'avoir  plus  de  jour  maintenant,"  répète-t-il,  d'un 
accent  singulier.  A  peine  est-il  assis  avec  sa  famille,  qu'un  des  convives 
de  la  table  d'hôte,  en  train  de  déjeuner,  se  lève,  et  vient  le  saluer  avec 
une  exclamation  de  surprise.  "Vous  ici!  Vous  êtes  donc  debout?  D'ail- 
leurs, vous  avez  très  belle  mine." — "Oui, "dit  le  sous-officier," çà  n'em- 
pêche pas  qu'il  est  en  verre  —  "  Et  il  montre  son  œil  droit.  En  quel- 
ques mots,  très  simplement,  il  raconte  qu'une  balle  lui  a  enlevé  cet  œil 

c  65  : 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

droit  en  Argonne.  "C'est  dommage,"  continue-t-il,  "on  était  si  bien,  si 
contents  de  n'être  plus  dans  l'eau  et  dans  la  boue."  Et  l'autre  de  s'écrier: 
"Vous  êtes  tous  comme  ça,  dans  l'armée,  si  braves,  si  modestes!  Nous 
autres,  les  vieux,  nous  n'avons  été  que  de  la  Saint-Jean  à  côté  de  vous. 
70,  qu'est-ce  que  c'était.-^  Rien  du  tout.  Mais  ça  finira  autrement." — "Il 
le  faut,"  dit  le  sous-officier,  "  et  pour  nous,  et  pour  ces  pauvres  Belges  à 
qui  nous  devons  d'avoir  eu  du  temps.  Oui,"  insiste-t-il,  en  posant  sa  main 
sur  la  tête  de  son  enfant,  "pour  ceux-là  aussi  il  le  faut." — "Qui  est  ce 
monsieur .''"  dis-je  à  la  servante. — "Ce  sous-officier.''"  répond-elle, " un 
négociant  de  Paris.  Le  frère  de  sa  dame  a  été  tué."  Je  regarde  manger 
ces  gens,  si  éprouvés.  Ils  sont  bien  sérieux,  bien  accablés,  mais  si  dignes. 
Les  mots  que  ce  borgne  héroïque  a  prononcés,  cet  "  il  le  faut  "  donne  à  tous 
leurs  gestes  une  émouvante  gravité. 

Je  reprends  ma  route,  et  je  le  retrouve  cet  "il  le  faut"  du  sergent,  ce 
"puisqu'il  faut  ça"  de  l'hôtelière,  comme  écrit  dans  tous  les  aspects  de  cet 
horizon.  C'est  le  moment  de  la  moisson.  Des  femmes  y  travaillent,  des 
garçonnets,  des  petites  filles.  La  suppléance  du  mari,  du  père,  du  frère 
absents,  s'est  faite  simplement,  sans  qu'il  y  ait  eu  besoin  d'aucun  appel, 
d'aucun  décret.  Sur  deux  charrettes  que  je  croise,  une  est  menée  par  une 
femme.  Des  femmes  conduisent  les  troupeaux.  Des  femmes  étaient  der- 
rière les  guichets  de  la  Banque  où  je  suis  descendu  chercher  de  la  mon- 
naie, dans  la  petite  ville.  Un  de  mes  amis,  qui  a  de  gros  intérêts  dans  le 
midi,  me  racontait  que  son  homme  d'affaires  est  aux  Dardanelles:  "Sa 
femme  gère  mes  propriétés  à  sa  place.  Elle  est  étonnante  d'intelligence 
et  de  bravoure."  Oui,  c'est  toujours  ce  même  tranquille  stoïcisme;  cette 
totale  absence  de  plainte.  Un  bataillon  de  territoriaux  défile.  Ils  ne  sont 
plus  jeunes.  Leur  existence  était  établie.  Elle  est  bouleversée.  Ils  subis- 
sent l'épreuve  sans  un  murmure  et  marquent  le  pas  sur  la  route  brûlée 
de  soleil  avec  une  énergie  qui  révèle,  chez  eux  aussi,  le  sentiment  de  la 
nécessité.  C'est,  pour  moi,  le  caractère  pathétique  de  cette  guerre.  Elle  a 
la  grandeur  auguste  des  actions  vitales  de  la  nature.  Elle  est  le  geste  d'un 
pays  qui  ne  veut  pas  mourir,  et  qui  ne  mourra  pas,  ni  lui  ni  cette  noble 

:  66] 


PAUL  BOURG ET 

Belgique,  dont  parlait  le  sous-officier,  et  qui,  elle,  a  prononcé  avec  autant 
de  fermeté  résolue  son  "il  le  faut,"  quand  l'Allemand  l'a  provoquée,  et 
plus  pathétiquement  encore.  Ce  n'était  pas  pour  la  vie  qu'elle  allait  se 
battre,  c'était  pour  l'honneur,  pour  la  probité.  Il  n'est  pas  un  Français  qui 
ne  le  sente,  et  qui  ne  confonde  sa  propre  cause  avec  celle  des  admirables 
sujets  de  l'admirable  Roi  Albert. 

Paul  Bourget 

c/f  r Académie  Française 


ONE  YEAR  LATER 

[translation] 

OuRiNG  the  first  days  of  August,  1915, 1  found  myself  motoring  in  one 
of  the  central  provinces  of  France.  I  had  crossed  the  same  region  in  the 
same  way  just  a  year  before,  when  the  beginning  of  mobilization  was 
crowding  the  roads  with  waggons,  with  artillery  and  with  marching 
troops.  Only  one  year!  How  many  men  are  dead  since!  But  the  high 
resolve  of  the  nation  is  as  firm  as  it  was  then,  when  all  through  the  land 
there  was  only  one  impulse — to  go  forward.  The  willingness  to  fight  and 
to  endure  has  not  grown  less. 

I  went  into  an  hotel  for  luncheon.  I  know  the  woman  who  keeps  it, 
because  I  always  stop  there  when  I  go  through  the  little  town.  I  found 
her  dressed  in  black:  she  had  lost  her  brother  in  Alsace.  Her  husband 
was  waiting  to  be  sent  to  the  front.  I  asked  her  if  she  were  doing  any 
business.  "Not  much,"  she  answered.  "Nobody  is  travelling,  and  all  the 
mobilized  men  are  gone.  The  barracks  are  empty;  why,  only  this  morn- 
ing—  ""It  seems  a  longtime,"  I  said,  to  draw  her  on.  "  Yes,"  she  said, 
"but  since  we  must.  .  .  "  and  she  went  back  without  complaint  to  the 
task  of  writing  her  bills  of  fare.  There  were  two  maids  in  the  dining- 
room,  one  of  them  also  in  black.  I  questioned  her  and  learnt  that  her 

C   67   ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

husband  had  been  killed  on  the  Yser.  Her  face  was  full  of  sorrow,  but 
like  her  mistress  she  blamed  no  one,  and  accepted  her  loss  because  it 
"must"  be  so. 

Soon  a  non-commissioned  officer  came  in,  followed  by  a  woman  in  deep 
mourning,  a  little  boy,  and  an  elderly  man;  I  learnt  afterwards  that  they 
were  the  sergeant's  wife,  his  son,  and  his  father.  I  saw  his  profile,  and 
noticed  that  he  seemed  to  stare  fixedly.  He  declined  a  place  at  the  back 
of  the  room,  and  came  toward  the  window.  "  I  need  plenty  of  light  now," 
he  said  in  an  odd  voice.  Heand  his  family  had  just  seated  themselves  when 
one  of  the  guests  at  the  long  table  d'hote  rose  with  an  exclamation  of 
surprise  and  came  over  to  him,  saying:  "Why,  are  you  out  again?  How 
well  you  look  !  "  "  Yes,"  said  the  sergeant;  "but  all  the  same  this  one  is 
glass,"  pointing  to  his  right  eye,  and  in  a  few  words  he  told  how  it  had 
been  knocked  out  by  a  bullet  in  the  Argonne.  "It  was  such  a  pity," he 
said,  "for  we  were  all  so  glad  when  the  fighting  began,  and  we  got  out 
of  the  mud  and  water  in  the  trenches.""  You  are  all  just  like  that  in  the 
army!"  said  his  friend,  "all  so  plucky  and  so  simple!  We  old  fellows 
were  only  amateurs  compared  to  you!  What  was  the  war  of  1870  to  this 
one.''  This  time  there  will  be  a  different  ending."  "There  must  be,"  said 
the  sergeant,"  not  only  for  us  but  for  the  Belgians,  who  gained  us  so  much 
time."  And  he  repeated,  laying  his  hand  on  his  boy's  head,  "Yes,  for 
these  little  chaps  also  it  must  be  so." 

Presently  I  found  a  chance  to  ask  the  maid  what  she  knew  about  the 
soldier  who  had  been  speaking.  "That  sergeant.?  He  is  a  Paris  shopkeeper. 
His  wife's  brother  has  been  killed."  I  watched  these  people  at  table,  so 
serious,  so  sorely  tried,  but  so  full  of  dignity,  and  the  words  which  the 
half-blinded  man  had  pronounced  seemed  to  make  even  his  ordinary  ges- 
tures impressive. 

All  along  the  road,  for  the  rest  of  that  journey  the  "it  must  be"  of 
the  hotel-keeper  and  the  sergeant  seemed  to  be  written  over  the  whole 
country-side.  It  was  harvest-time,  and  women,  lads  and  little  girls  were 
working  in  the  fields,  replacing  absent  husbands,  fathers  and  brothers. 

[  68   ] 


PAUL  BOURG ET 

They  were  doing  it  quite  simply,  not  drawn  by  any  appeal,  nor  compelled 
by  any  order.  Every  other  cart  I  met  was  driven  by  a  woman.  Women 
were  herding  the  cattle.  There  was  a  woman  at  the  cashier's  desk  of  the 
bank  in  the  town  where  I  went  to  get  some  money  changed. 

One  of  my  friends,  who  has  large  interests  in  the  south  of  France,  told 
me  that  his  man  of  business  was  at  the  Dardanelles.  "  His  wife  looks 
after  my  property  in  his  place.  She  is  astonishingly  intelligent  and  capable." 
Everywhere  the  same  tranquil  stoicism,  the  same  entire  absence  of  com- 
plaint. 

A  battalion  of  territorials  marched  past.  They  were  not  young  men. 
All  of  them  had  had  fixed  duties  and  habits  which  were  now  broken 
up.  Yet  they  submitted  without  a  munnur,  marching  along  the  hot  and 
dusty  road  with  an  energy  which  revealed  in  them  also  the  same  sense  of 
compelling  necessity.  That,  to  my  mind,  gives  to  this  war  its  pathetic 
side.  It  has  all  the  imposing  grandeur  of  the  vital  forces  of  nature;  it 
is  the  heroic  movement  of  a  country  which  defies  death,  which  is  not 
meant  to  die.  Nor  will  she  allow  Belgium  to  die — the  Belgium  to  whom 
the  sergeant  paid  his  tribute,  and  whose"  we  must"  rang  out  with  such 
poignant  firmness  under  the  German  menace.  It  was  not  for  life  alone 
that  Belgium  fought,  but  for  honour  and  for  justice.  No  Frenchman  lives 
who  does  not  feel  this,  and  who  does  not  merge  his  own  cause  in  that 
of  the  indomitable  subjects  of  Belgium's  indomitable  King. 

Paul  Bourget 

de  r  Académie  Française 


169  3 


LEON  BON  NAT 
PEGASUS 

FROM  A  PENCIL  AND  PEN-AND-INK  SKETCH 


\\ 


JOSEPH  COJ^RAD 


POLAND  REVISITED 


I  HAVE  never  believed  in  political  assassination  as  a  means  to  an  end,  and 
least  of  all  if  the  assassination  is  of  the  dynastic  order.  I  don't  know  how 
far  murder  can  ever  approach  the  efficiency  of  a  fine  art,  but  looked 
upon  with  the  cold  eye  of  reason  it  seems  but  a  crude  expedient  either 
of  impatient  hope  or  hurried  despair.  There  are  few  men  whose  prema- 
ture death  could  influence  human  affairs  more  than  on  the  surface.  The 
deeper  stream  of  causes  depends  not  on  individualities  which,  like  the 
mass  of  mankind,  are  carried  on  by  the  destiny  which  no  murder  had 
ever  been  able  to  placate,  divert  or  arrest. 

In  July  of  Q1914]]  I  was  a  stranger  in  a  strange  city  and  particularly 
out  of  touch  with  the  world's  politics.  Never  a  very  diligent  reader  of 
newspapers,  there  were  at  that  time  reasons  of  a  private  order  which 
caused  me  to  be  even  less  informed  than  usual  on  public  affairs  as  pre- 
sented from  day  to  day  in  that  particular  atmosphere-less,  perspective- 
lessness  of  the  daily  papers  which  somehow  for  a  man  with  some  historic 
sense  robs  them  of  all  real  interest.  I  don't  think  I  had  looked  at  a  daily 
for  a  month  past. 

But  though  a  stranger  in  a  strange  city  I  was  not  lonely,  thanks  to  a 
friend  who  had  travelled  there  with  me  out  of  pure  kindness,  to  bear  me 
company  in  a  conjuncture  which,  in  a  most  private  sense,  was  somewhat 
trying. 

It  was  this  friend  who  one  morning  at  breakfast  informed  me  of  the 
murder  of  the  Archduke  Ferdinand. 

The  impression  was  mediocre.  I  was  barely  aware  that  such  a  man 
exi.sted.  I  remembered  only  that  not  long  before  he  had  visited  London, 
but  that  memory  was  lost  in  a  cloud  of  insignificant  printed  words  his 
presence  in  this  country  provoked.  Various  opinions  had  been  expressed 
of  him,  but  his  importance  had  been  archducal,  dynastic,  purely  acciden- 

C   71    ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

tal.  Can  there  be  in  the  world  of  real  men  anything  more  shadowy  than 
an  archduke?  And  now  he  was  no  more,  and  with  a  certain  atrocity  of 
circumstance  which  made  one  more  sensible  of  his  humanity  than  when 
he  was  in  life.  I  knew  nothing  of  his  journey.  I  did  not  connect  that  crime 
with  Balkanic  plots  and  aspirations.  I  asked  where  it  had  happened.  My 
friend  told  me  it  was  in  Serajevo,  and  wondered  what  would  be  the 
consequences  of  that  grave  event.  He  asked  me  what  I  thought  would 
happen  next. 

It  was  with  perfect  sincerity  that  I  said  "Nothing,"  and  I  dismissed  the 
subject,  having  a  great  repugnance  to  consider  murder  as  an  engine  of 
politics.  It  fitted  with  my  ethical  sense  that  an  act  cruel  and  absurd  should 
be  also  useless.  I  had  also  the  vision  of  a  crowd  of  shadowy  archdukes  in 
the  background  out  of  which  one  would  step  forward  to  take  the  place  of 
that  dead  man  in  the  sun  of  European  politics.  And  then,  to  speak  the  whole 
truth,  there  was  no  man  capable  of  forming  a  judgement  who  attended 
so  little  to  the  march  of  events  as  I  did  at  that  time.  What  for  want  of  a 
more  definite  term  I  must  call  my  mind  was  fixed  on  my  own  affairs, 
not  because  they  were  in  a  bad  posture,  but  because  of  their  fascinat- 
ing, holiday  promising  aspect.  I  obtained  my  information  as  to  Europe  at 
second  hand,  from  friends  good  enough  to  come  down  now  and  then  to 
see  us  with  their  pockets  full  of  crumpled  papers,  and  who  imparted  it 
to  me  casually  with  gentle  smiles  of  scepticism  as  to  the  reality  of  my 
interest.  And  yet  I  was  not  indifferent;  but  the  tension  in  the  Balkans 
had  become  chronic  after  the  acute  crisis,  and  one  could  not  help  being 
less  conscious  of  it.  It  had  wearied  out  one's  attention.  Who  could  have 
guessed  that  on  that  wild  stage  we  had  just  been  looking  at  a  miniature 
rehearsal  of  the  great  world  drama,  the  reduced  model  of  the  very  pas- 
sions and  violences  of  what  the  future  held  in  store  for  the  powers  of 
the  Old  World.''  Here  and  there,  perhaps,  rare  minds  had  a  suspicion  of 
that  possibility  while  watching  the  collective  Europe  stage  managing  a 
little  contemptuously  in  a  feeling  of  conscious  superiority,  by  means  of 
notes  and  conferences,  the  prophetic  reproduction  of  its  awaiting  fate.  It 

C   72   ] 


JOSEPH  COjVRAD 

was  wonderfully  exact  in  the  spirit,  same  roar  of  guns,  same  protestations 
of  superiority,  same  words  in  the  air:  race,  liberation,  justice,  and  the  same 
mood  of  trivial  demonstration.  You  could  not  take  to-day  a  ticket  for 
Petersburg,  however  roundabout  the  route.  "You  mean  Petrograd," 
would  say  the  booking-clerk.  Shortly  after  the  fall  of  Adrianople  a  friend 
of  mine  passing  tlirough  Sophia  asked  for  some  "  café  turc  "  at  the  end  of 
his  lunch. 

— "  Monsieur  veut  dire  café  balkanique,"  the  patriotic  waiter  corrected 
him  austerely. 

I  will  not  say  that  I  had  not  seen  something  of  that  instructive  aspect 
in  the  war  of  the  Balkans,  both  in  its  first  and  even  in  its  second  phase. 
But  those  with  whom  I  touched  upon  that  vision  were  pleased  to  see  in 
it  the  evidence  of  an  alarmist  cynicism.  As  to  alarm  I  pointed  out  that 
fear  is  natural  to  man  and  even  salutary.  It  has  done  as  much  as  cour- 
age for  the  preservation  of  races  and  in.stitutions.  But  from  a  charge 
of  cynicism  I  have  always  shrunk  instinctively.  It  is  like  a  charge  of 
being  blind  in  one  eye,  a  moral  disablement,  a  sort  of  disgraceful  calam- 
ity that  must  be  carried  off  by  a  jaunty  bearing — a  sort  of  thing  I  am  not 
capable  of.  Rather  than  be  thought  to  be  a  mere  jaunty  cripple  I  allowed 
myself  to  be  blinded  by  the  gross  obviousness  of  the  usual  arguments. 
It  had  been  pointed  out  to  me  that  those  were  nations  not  far  removed 
from  a  savage  state.  Their  economics  were  yet  at  the  stage  of  scratch- 
ing the  earth  and  feeding  pigs.  The  complex  material  civilization  of 
Europe  could  not  allow  itself  to  be  disturbed  by  war.  The  industry  and 
the  finance  could  not  allow  themselves  to  be  disorganised  by  the  ambi- 
tions of  the  idle  class  or  even  the  aspirations,  whatever  they  might  be, 
of  the  masses. 

Very  plausible  all  this  sounded.  War  docs  not  pay.  There  had  been 
even  a  book  written  on  that  theme — an  attempt  to  put  pacifism  on  a  ma- 
terial basis.  Nothing  more  solid  could  have  been  imagined  on  this  trad- 
ing and  manufacturing  globe.  War  was  bad  business!  This  was  final. 

But  truth  to  say  on  this  fateful  July  I  reflected  but  little  on  the  con- 

C   7.-3   ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

dition  of  the  civilised  world.  Whatever  sinister  passions  were  heaving 
under  its  splendid  and  complex  surface,  I  was  too  agitated  by  a  simple 
and  innocent  desire  to  notice  the  signs,  or  to  interpret  them  correctly.  The 
most  innocent  of  passions  takes  the  edge  off  one's  judgement.  The  desire 
which  obsessed  me  was  simply  the  desire  of  travel.  And  that  being  so, 
it  would  have  taken  something  very  plain  in  the  way  of  symptoms  to 
shake  my  simple  trust  in  the  stability  of  things  on  the  continent.  My  sen- 
timent and  not  my  reason  was  engaged  there.  My  eyes  were  turned 
to  the  past,  not  to  the  future — the  past  that  one  cannot  suspect  and 
mistrust,  the  shadowy  and  unquestionable  moral  possession,  the  darkest 
struggles  of  which  wear  a  halo  of  glory  and  peace. 

hi  the  preceding  month  of  May  we  had  received  an  invitation  to  spend 
some  weeks  in  Poland  in  a  country  house  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Cracow 
but  on  the  other  side  of  the  Russian  frontier.  The  enterprise  at  first  seemed 
to  be  considerable.  Since  leaving  the  sea  to  which  I  have  been  faithful  for 
so  many  years,  I  have  discovered  that  there  is  in  my  composition  very 
little  stuff  from  which  travellers  are  made.  I  confess  it  with  shame,  my 
first  idea  about  a  projected  journey  is  to  leave  it  alone. 

But  that  invitation,  received  at  first  with  a  sort  of  uneasiness,  awoke  the 
dormant  energies  in  my  feelings.  Cracow  is  the  town  where  I  spent  with 
my  father  the  last  eighteen  months  of  his  life.  It  was  in  that  old  royal 
and  academical  city  that  I  ceased  to  be  a  child,  became  a  boy,  knew  the 
friendships,  the  admirations,  the  thoughts  and  the  indignation  of  that  age. 
It  was  between  those  historic  walls  that  I  began  to  understand  things, 
form  affections,  lay  up  a  store  of  memories  and  a  fund  of  sensations  with 
which  I  was  to  break  violently  by  throwing  myself  into  an  unrelated  life 
which  permitted  me  but  seldom  to  look  back  that  way.  The  wings  of 
time  were  spread  over  all  this,  and  I  feared  at  first  that  if  I  ventured  bod- 
ily in  there  I  would  find  that  I  who  have  evoked  so  many  imaginary  lives 
had  been  embracing  mere  shadows  in  my  youth.  I  feared.  But  fear  in 
itself  may  become  a  fascination.  Men  have  gone  alone,  trembling,  into 
graveyards  at  midnight — just  to  see  what  would  happen.  And  this  ad- 

C   74  1 


JOSEPH  COjXRAD 

venture  was  to  be  pursued  in  sunshine.  Neither  would  it  be  pursued  alone. 
The  invitation  was  extended  to  us  all.  This  journey  would  have  something 
of  a  migratory  character,  the  invasion  of  a  tribe.  My  present,  all  that  gave 
solidity  and  value  to  it  at  any  rate,  would  stand  by  me  in  this  test  of  the 
reality  of  my  past.  I  was  pleased  to  show  my  companions  what  Polish  coun- 
try life  was  like  and  the  town  where  I  was  at  school,  before  my  boys  got 
too  old,  and  gaining  an  individual  past  of  their  own  should  lose  the  fresh 
sympathies  of  their  age.  It  is  only  in  this  short  understanding  of  youth  that 
perhaps  we  have  the  faculty  of  coming  out  of  ourselves  to  see  dimly  the 
visions  and  share  the  trouble  of  another  soul.  For  youth  all  is  reality,  and 
with  justice;  since  they  can  apprehend  so  vividly  its  images  behind  which 
a  longer  life  makes  one  doubt  whether  there  is  any  substance.  I  trusted  to 
the  fresh  receptivity  of  these  young  beings  in  whom,  unless  heredity  is 
merely  a  phantasy,  there  should  have  been  fibre  which  would  quicken  at 
the  sight,  the  atmosphere,thememories,of  that  corner  of  the  earth  where 
my  own  boyhood  received  its  first  independent  impressions. 

The  first  of  the  third  week  in  July,  while  the  telegraph  wires  hummed 
with  the  words  of  enormous  import  which  were  to  fill  blue-books,  yellow- 
books,  white-books  and  rouse  the  wonder  of  the  world,  was  taken  up 
with  light-hearted  preparation  for  the  journey.  What  was  it  but  just  a 
rush  through  Germany  to  get  over  as  quickly  as  possible.'' 

It  is  the  part  of  the  earth's  solid  surface  of  which  I  know  the  least.  In 
my  life  I  had  been  across  it  only  twice.  I  may  well  say  of  it,  "  Vidi  tan- 
tum,"  and  that  very  little  I  saw  through  the  window  of  a  railway  carriage 
at  express  speed.  Those  journeys  were  more  like  pilgrimages  when  one 
hurries  on  towards  the  goal  without  looking  to  the  right  or  left  for  the 
satisfaction  of  deeper  need  than  curiosity.  In  this  last  instance,  too,  I  was 
so  uncurious  that  I  would  have  liked  to  fall  asleep  on  the  shores  of  Eng- 
land and  open  my  eyes  only,  if  it  were  possible,  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Silesian  frontier. 

Yet  in  truth,  as  many  others  have  done,  I  had  "sensed  it,"  that  prom- 
ised land  of  steel,  of  chemical  dyes,  of  method,  of  efficiency;  that  race 

C  75  ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

planted  in  the  middle  of  Europe,  assuming  in  grotesque  vanity  the  atti- 
tude of  Europeans  amongst  effete  Asiatics  or  mere  niggers,  and  with  a 
feeling  of  superiority  freeing  their  hands  of  all  moral  bonds  and  anxious 
to  take  up,  if  I  may  express  myself  so,  the  "perfect  man's  burden." 
Meantime  in  a  clearing  of  the  Teutonic  forest  their  sages  were  rearing 
a  Tree  of  cynical  wisdom,  a  sort  of  Upas  tree,  whose  shade  may  be  seen 
lying  now  over  the  prostrate  body  of  Belgium.  It  must  be  said  that  they 
laboured  open  enough,  watering  it  from  the  most  authentic  sources  of 
all  evil,  and  watching  with  bespectacled  eyes  the  slow  ripening  of  the  glo- 
rious blood-red  fruit.  The  sincerest  words  of  peace,  words  of  menace, 
and  I  verily  believe,  words  of  abasement  even,  if  there  had  been  a  voice 
vile  enough  to  utter  them,  would  have  been  wasted  on  their  ecstasy.  For 
when  a  fruit  ripens  on  a  branch,  it  must  fall.  There  is  nothing  on  earth 
that  can  prevent  it. 

II 

For  reasons  which  at  first  seemed  to  me  somewhat  obscure,  that  one  of 
my  companions  whose  wishes  are  law  decided  that  our  travels  should 
begin  in  an  unusual  way  by  the  crossing  of  the  North  Sea.  We  should 
proceed  from  Harwich  to  Hamburg.  Besides  being  thirty-six  times  longer 
than  the  usual  Dover-Calais  passage  this  rather  unusual  route  had  an  air 
of  adventure  in  better  keeping  with  the  romantic  feeling  of  this  Polish 
journey,  which  for  so  many  years  had  been  before  us  in  a  state  of  a 
project  full  of  colour  and  promise,  but  always  retreating,  elusive,  like  an 
enticing  mirage. 

And,  after  all,  it  had  turned  out  to  be  no  mirage.  No  wonder  they 
were  excited.  It's  no  mean  experience  to  lay  your  hands  on  a  mirage. 
The  day  of  departure  had  come,  the  very  hour  had  struck.  The  luggage 
was  coming  downstairs.  It  was  most  convincing.  Poland  then,  if  erased 
from  the  map,  yet  existed  in  reality  ;  it  was  not  a  mere  "pays  du  rêve," 
where  you  can  travel  only  in  imagination.  For  no  man,  they  argued,  not 
even  father,  an  habitual  pursuer  of  dreams,  would  push  the  love  of  the 

c  76  n 


JOSEPH  COjYRAD 

novelist's  art  of  make-believe  to  the  point  of  burdening  himself  with  real 
trunks  for  a  voyage  "au  pays  du  rêve." 

As  we  left  the  door  of  our  house,  nestling  in,  perhaps,  the  most  peace- 
ful nook  in  Kent,  the  sky,  after  weeks  of  perfectly  brazen  serenity,  veiled 
its  blue  depths  and  started  to  weep  fine  tears  for  the  refreshment  of  the 
parched  fields.  A  pearly  blurr  settled  over  them  ;  a  light  sifted  of  all  glare, 
of  everything  unkindly  and  searching  that  dwells  in  the  splendour  of 
unveiled  skies.  All  unconscious  of  going  towards  the  very  scenes  of  war, 
I  carried  oflfin  my  eye  this  tiny  fragment  of  Great  Britain:  a  few  fields, 
a  wooded  rise,  a  clump  of  trees  or  two,  with  a  short  stretch  of  road,  and 
here  and  there  a  gleam  of  red  wall  and  tiled  roof  above  the  darkening 
hedges  wrapped  up  in  soft  mist  and  peace.  And  I  felt  that  all  this  had  a 
very  strong  hold  on  me  as  the  embodiment  of  a  beneficent  and  gentle 
spirit;  that  it  was  dear  to  me  not  as  an  inheritance,  but  as  an  acquisition, 
as  a  conquest  in  the  sense  in  which  a  woman  is  conquered — ^by  love, 
which  is  a  sort  of  surrender. 

Those  were  strange,  as  if  disproportionate  thoughts  to  the  matter  in 
hand,  which  was  the  simplest,  sort  of  a  Continental  holiday.  And  I  am 
certain  that  my  companions,  near  as  they  are  to  me,  felt  no  other  trouble 
but  the  suppressed  excitement  of  pleasurable  anticipation.  The  forms  and 
the  spirit  of  the  land  before  their  eyes  were  their  inheritance,  not  their 
conquest — which  is  a  thing  precarious,  and,  therefore,  the  more  precious, 
possessing  you  if  only  by  the  fear  of  un  worthiness,  rather  than  possessed 
by  you.  Moreover,  as  we  sat  together  in  the  same  railway  carriage,  they 
were  looking  forward  to  a  voyage  in  space,  whereas  I  felt  more  and  more 
plainly  that  what  I  had  started  on  was  a  journey  in  time,  into  the  past; 
a  fearful  enough  prospect  for  the  most  consistent,  but  to  him  who  had 
not  known  how  to  preserve  against  his  impulses  the  order  and  continu- 
ity of  his  life — so  that  at  times  it  presented  itself  to  his  conscience  as  a 
series  of  betrayals — still  more  dreadful. 

I  confess  here  my  thoughts  so  exclusively  personal  to  explain  why 
there  was  no  room  in  my  consciousness  for  the  apprehension  of  a  Euro- 

C   77  2 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

pean  war.  I  don't  mean  to  say  I  ignored  the  possibility.  I  simply  did  not 
think  of  it.  And  it  made  no  difference;  for,  if  I  had  thought  of  it,  it  could 
only  have  been  in  the  lame  and  inconclusive  way  of  the  common  unin- 
itiated mortals  ;  and  I  am  sure  that  nothing  short  of  intellectual  certitude 
—obviously  unattainable  by  the  man  in  the  street — could  have  stayed 
me  on  that  journey  which  now  that  I  had  started  on  it  seemed  an  irre- 
vocable thing,  a  necessity  of  my  self-respect. 

London — the  London  of  before  the  war,  flaunting  its  enormous  glare 
as  of  a  monstrous  conflagration  up  into  the  black  sky — received  us  with 
its  best  Venice-like  aspect  of  rainy  evenings,  the  wet,  asphalted  streets 
lying  with  the  sheen  of  sleeping  water  in  winding  canals,  and  the  great 
houses  of  the  city  towering  all  dark  like  empty  palaces  above  the  re- 
flected lights  of  the  glistening  roadway. 

Everything  in  the  subdued  incomplete  night  life  around  the  Mansion 
House  went  on  normally,  with  its  fascinating  air  of  a  dead  commercial 
city  of  sombre  walls  through  which  the  inextinguishable  night  life  of 
millions  streamed  East  and  West  in  a  brilliant  flow  of  lighted  vehicles. 

In  Liverpool  Street,  as  usual  too,  through  the  double  gates,  a  contin- 
uous line  of  taxicabs  glided  down  the  inclined  approach  and  up  again, 
like  an  endless  chain  of  dredger-buckets  pouring  in  the  passengers,  and 
dipping  them  out  of  the  great  railway  station  under  the  inexorable  pallid 
face  of  the  clock  telling  off  the  diminishing  minutes  of  peace.  It  was  the 
hour  of  the  boat  trains  to  Holland,  to  Hamburg,  and  there  seemed  to  be 
no  lack  of  people,  fearless,  reckless,  or  ignorant,  who  wanted  to  go  to 
these  places.  The  station  was  normally  crowded,  and  if  there  was  a  great 
flutter  of  evening  papers  in  the  multitude  of  hands,  there  were  no  signs 
of  extraordinary  emotion  on  that  multitude  of  faces.  There  was  nothing 
in  them  to  distract  me  from  the  thought  that  it  was  singularly  appropri- 
ate that  I  should  start  from  this  station  on  the  retraced  way  of  my  exist- 
ence. For  this  was  the  station  at  which,  thirty-six  years  ago,  I  arrived 
on  my  first  visit  to  London.  Not  the  same  building,  but  the  same  spot. 
At  eighteen  years  of  age,  after  a  period  of  probation  and  training  I  had 

[   78   ] 


JOSEPH  COJVRAD 

imposed  upon  myself  as  ordinary  seaman  on  board  a  North  Sea  coaster, 
I  had  come  up  from  Lowestoft — my  first  long  railway  journey  in  Eng- 
land— to  "sign  on"  for  an  Antipodean  voyage  in  a  deep-water  ship. 
Straight  from  a  railway  carriage  I  had  walked  into  the  great  city  with 
something  of  the  feeling  of  a  traveller  penetrating  into  a  vast  and  unex- 
plored wilderness.  No  explorer  could  have  been  more  lonely.  I  did  not 
know  a  single  soul  of  all  these  millions  that  all  around  me  peopled  the 
mysterious  distances  of  the  streets.  I  cannot  say  I  was  free  from  a  little 
youthful  awe,  but  at  that  age  one's  feelings  are  simple.  I  was  elated.  I 
was  pursuing  a  clear  aim.  I  was  carrying  out  a  deliberate  plan  of  mak- 
ing out  of  myself,  in  the  first  place,  a  seaman  worthy  of  the  service,  good 
enough  to  work  by  the  side  of  the  men  with  whom  I  was  to  live  ;  and  in 
the  second  place,  I  had  to  justify  my  existence  to  myself,  to  redeem 
a  tacit  moral  pledge.  Both  these  aims  were  to  be  attained  by  the  same 
eflx)rt.  How  simple  seemed  the  problem  of  life  then,  on  that  hazy  day  of 
early  September  in  the  year  1878,  when  I  entered  London  for  the  first 
time. 

From  that  point  of  view — youth  and  a  straightforward  scheme  of  con- 
duct—  it  was  certainly  a  year  of  grace.  All  the  help  I  had  to  get  in  touch 
witii  the  world  I  was  invading  was  a  piece  of  paper  not  much  bigger 
than  the  palm  of  my  hand — in  which  I  held  it — torn  out  of  a  larger  plan 
of  London  for  the  greater  facility  of  reference.  It  had  been  the  object 
of  careful  study  for  some  days  past.  The  fact  that  I  could  take  a  convey- 
ance at  the  station  had  never  occurred  to  my  mind,  no,  not  even  when 
I  got  out  into  the  street  and  stood,  taking  my  anxious  bearings,  in  the 
midst,  .so  to  speak,  of  twenty  thousand  cabs.  A  strange  absence  of  mind 
or  unconscious  conviction  that  one  cannot  approach  an  important  mo- 
ment of  one's  life  by  means  of  a  hired  carriage.''  Yes,  it  would  have  been 
a  preposterous  proceeding.  And  indeed  I  was  to  make  an  Australian  voy- 
age and  encircle  the  globe  before  ever  entering  a  London  hansom. 

Another  document,  a  cutting  from  a  newspaper,  containing  the  address 
of  an  obscure  agent,  was  in  my  pocket.  And  I  needed  not  to  take  it  out. 

C   79  ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

That  address  was  as  if  graven  deep  in  my  brain.  I  muttered  its  words 
to  myself  as  I  walked  on,  navigating  the  sea  of  London  by  the  chart  con- 
cealed in  the  palm  of  my  hand;  for  I  had  vowed  to  myself  not  to  inquire 
my  way  from  any  one.  Youth  is  the  time  of  rash  pledges.  Had  I  taken 
a  wrong  turn  I  would  have  been  lost;  and  if  faithful  to  my  pledge  I 
might  have  remained  lost  for  days,  for  weeks,  have  left  perhaps  my 
bones  to  be  discovered  bleaching  in  some  blind  alley  of  the  Whitechapel 
district,  as  had  happened  to  lonely  travellers  lost  in  the  bush.  But  I  walked 
on  to  my  destination  without  hesitation  or  mistake,  showing  there,  for  the 
first  time,  something  of  that  faculty  to  absorb  and  make  my  own  correctly 
the  imaged  topography  of  a  chart,  which  in  later  years  was  to  help  me  in 
regions  of  intricate  navigation  to  keep  the  ships  entrusted  to  me  off  the 
ground.  And  the  place  I  was  bound  to  was  not  so  easy  to  find,  either.  It 
was  one  of  those  courts  hidden  away  from  the  charted  and  navigable 
streets,  lost  amongst  the  thick  growth  of  houses,  like  a  dark  pool  in  the 
depths  of  a  forest,  approached  by  an  inconspicuous  archway,  as  if  by  a 
secret  path;  a  Dickensian  nook  of  London,  that  wonder-city,  the  growth 
of  which  bears  no  sign  of  intelligent  design,  but  many  traces  of  freakishly 
sombre  phantasy  which  the  great  Master  knew  so  well  how  to  bring  out 
by  magic  of  his  great  and  understanding  love.  And  the  office  I  entered 
was  Dickensian  too.  The  dust  of  the  Waterloo  year  lay  on  the  panes  and 
frames  of  its  windows;  early  Georgian  grime  clung  to  its  sombre  wains- 
coting. 

It  was  one  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  but  the  day  was  gloomy.  By  the 
light  of  a  single  gas-jet  depending  from  the  smoked  ceiling  I  saw  an 
elderly  man,  in  a  long  coat  of  black  broadcloth.  He  had  a  grey  beard, 
a  big  nose,  thick  lips,  and  broad  shoulders.  His  longish  white  hair  and 
the  general  character  of  his  head  recalled  vaguely  a  burly  apostle  in 
the"barocco"  style  of  Italian  art.  Standing  up  at  a  tall,  shabby,  slanting 
desk,  his  silver-rimmed  spectacles  pushed  up  high  on  his  forehead,  he 
was  eating  a  mutton  chop,  which  had  been  just  brought  to  him  from  some 
Dickensian  eating-house  round  the  corner. 


JOSEPH  COJ^^RAD 

Without  ceasing  to  eat  he  turned  to  me  liis  barocco  apostle's  head  with 
an  expression  of  inquiry. 

I  produced  elaborately  a  series  of  vocal  sounds  which  must  have  borne 
sufficient  resemblance  to  the  phonetics  of  English  speech;  for  his  face 
broke  into  a  smile  of  comprehension  almost  at  once. — "Oh  it's  you  who 
wrote  a  letter  tome  the  other  day  from  Lowestoft  about  getting  a  ship." 

I  had  written  to  him  from  Lowestoft.  I  can't  remember  a  single  word 
of  that  letter  now.  It  was  my  very  first  composition  in  the  English  lan- 
guage. And  he  had  understood  it;  because  he  spoke  to  the  point  at  once, 
explaining  that  his  business,  mainly,  was  to  find  good  ships  for  young 
gentlemen  who  wanted  to  go  to  sea  as  premium  apprentices  with  a  view 
of  being  trained  for  ofllicers.  But  he  gathered  that  this  was  not  my  object. 
I  did  not  desire  to  be  apprenticed.  Was  that  the  case.»* 

It  was.  He  was  good  enough  to  say  then,  "Of  course  I  see  that  you 
are  a  gentleman  too.  But  your  wish  is  to  get  a  berth  before  the  mast  as 
an  Able  Seaman  if  possible.  Is  that  it.''" 

It  was  certainly  my  wish;  but  he  stated  doubtfully  that  he  feared 
he  could  not  help  me  much  in  this.  There  was  an  Act  of  Parliament 
which  made  it  penal  to  procure  ships  for  sailors.  "An  Act — of — Parlia- 
ment. A  law,"  he  took  pains  to  impress  it  again  and  again  on  my  foreign 
understanding,  while  I  looked  at  him  in  consternation. 

I  had  not  been  half  an  hour  in  London  before  I  had  run  my  head 
against  an  Act  of  Parhament!  What  a  hopeless  adventure!  However,  the 
barocco  apostle  was  a  resourceful  person  in  his  way,  and  we  managed 
to  get  round  the  hard  letter  of  it  without  damage  to  its  fine  spirit.  Yet, 
strictly  speaking,  it  was  not  the  conduct  of  a  good  citizen.  And  in  retro- 
spect there  is  an  unfilial  flavour  about  that  early  sin.  For  this  Act  of  Par- 
liament, the  Merchant  Shipping  Act  of  the  mid-Victorian  era,  had  been 
in  a  manner  of  speaking  a  father  and  mother  to  me.  For  many  years  it 
had  regulated  and  disciplined  my  life,  prescribed  my  food  and  the  amount 
of  my  breathing  space,  had  looked  after  my  health  and  tried  as  much  as 
possible  to  secure  my  personal  safety  in  a  risky  calling.  It  isn't  such  a 

[  si   ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

bad  thing  to  lead  a  life  of  hard  toil  and  plain  duty  within  the  four  corners 
of  an  honest  Act  of  Parliament.  And  I  am  glad  to  say  that  its  severities 
have  never  been  applied  to  me. 

In  the  year  1 878,  the  year  of  Peace  with  Honour,  I  had  walked  as  lone 
as  any  human  being  in  the  streets  of  London,  out  of  Liverpool  Street 
Station,  to  surrender  myself  to  its  care.  And  now,  in  the  year  of  the 
war  waged  for  honour  and  conscience  more  than  for  any  other  cause,  I 
was  there  again,  no  longer  alone,  but  a  man  of  infinitely  dear  and  close 
ties  grown  since  that  time,  of  work  done,  of  words  written,  of  friend- 
ship secured.  It  was  like  the  closing  of  a  thirty-six  years'  cycle. 

All  unaware  of  the  War  Angel  already  waiting  with  the  trumpet  at 
its  Hps  the  stroke  of  the  fatal  hour,  I  sat  there,  thinking  that  this  life  of 
ours  is  neither  long  nor  short,  but  that  it  can  appear  very  wonderful, 
entertaining,  and  pathetic,  with  symbolic  images  and  bizarre  associations 
crowded  into  one  half-hour  of  retrospective  musing. 

I  felt,  too,  that  this  journey  so  suddenly  entered  upon  was  bound  to 
take  me  away  from  daily  life's  actualities  at  every  step.  I  felt  it  more 
than  ever  when  presently  we  steamed  out  into  the  North  Sea,  on  a  dark 
night  fitful  with  gusts  of  wind,  and  I  lingered  on  deck,  alone  of  all  the 
tale  of  the  ship's  passengers.  That  sea  was  to  me  something  unforgettable, 
something  much  more  than  a  name.  It  had  been  for  a  time  the  school- 
room of  my  trade.  On  it,  I  may  safely  say,  I  had  learned,  too,  my  first 
words  of  English.  A  wild  and  stormy  abode,  sometimes,  was  that  fine, 
narrow- waters  academy  of  seamanship  from  which  I  launched  myself  on 
the  wide  oceans.  My  teachers  had  been  the  coasting  sailors  of  the  Norfolk 
shore.  Coast  men,  with  steady  eyes,  mighty  limbs,  and  gentle  voice.  Men 
of  very  few  words,  which,  at  least,  were  never  bare  of  meaning.  Honest, 
strong,  steady  men,  sobered  by  domestic  ties,  one  and  all  as  far  as  I  can 
remember. 

That  is  what  years  ago  the  North  Sea,  I  could  hear  growling  in  the 
dark  all  round  the  ship,  had  been  for  me.  And  I  fancied  that  I  must  have 
been  carrying  its  voice  in  my  ear  ever  since,  for  nothing  could  be  more 

c  82  :] 


JOSEPH  COXRAD 

familiar  than  those  short,  angry  sounds  I  was  listening  to  with  a  smile 
of  affectionate  recognition. 

I  could  not  guess  that  before  many  days  my  schoolroom  would  be 
desecrated  by  violence,  littered  with  wrecks,  with  death  walking  its  waves, 
hiding  under  the  waters.  Perhaps  while  I  am  writing  these  words  the 
children,  or  maybe  the  grandchildren,  of  my  pacific  teachers  are  out  in 
drifters  uiider  the  naval  flag,  dredging  for  German  submarine  mines. 


Ill 

I  have  said  that  the  North  Sea  was  my  finishing  school  of  seamanship 
before  I  launched  myself  on  the  wider  oceans.  Confined  as  it  is  in  com- 
parison with  the  vast  stage  of  this  water-girt  globe,  I  did  not  know  it  in 
all  its  parts.  My  classroom  was  the  region  of  the  English  East  Coast 
which,  in  the  year  of  Peace  with  Honour,  had  long  forgotten  the  war  epi- 
sodes belonging  to  its  maritime  history.  It  was  a  peaceful  coast,  agricul- 
tural, industrial,  the  home  of  fishermen.  At  night  the  lights  of  its  many 
towns  played  on  the  clouds,  or  in  clear  weather  lay  still,  here  and  there, 
in  brilliant  pools  above  the  ink-black  outline  of  the  shore.  On  many  a 
night  I  have  hauled  at  the  braces  under  the  very  shadow  of  that  coast, 
envying,  as  sailors  will,  the  people  ashore  sleeping  quietly  in  their  beds 
within  sound  of  the  sea.  I  imagine  that  not  one  head  on  these  envied 
pillows  was  made  uneasy  by  the  slightest  premonition  of  the  realities 
of  naval  war  the  short  lifetime  of  one  generation  was  to  bring  to  their 
peaceful  shores. 

Though  far  away  from  that  region  of  kindly  memories  and  traversing 
a  part  of  the  North  Sea  much  less  known  to  me,  I  was  deeply  conscious 
of  the  familiarity  of  my  surroundings.  It  was  a  cloudy,  nasty  day,  and 
the  aspects  of  nature  don't  change,  unless  in  the  course  of  thousands  of 
years — or,  perhaps,  centuries.  The  Phœnicians,  its  first  discoverers,  the 
Romans,  the  first  imperial  rulers  of  that  sea,  had  experienced  days  like 
this,  so  different  in  the  wintry  quality  of  the  light  even  on  that  July  after- 

C  83  D 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

noon,  from  anything  they  had  ever  known  in  their  native  Mediterranean. 
For  niyself,a  very  late  comer  into  that  sea  and  its  former  pupil,  I  accorded 
amused  recognition  to  the  characteristic  aspect  so  well  remembered  from 
my  daysof  training. The  same  old  thing.  A  grey-green  expanse  of  smudgy 
waters  grinning  angrily  at  one  with  white  foam-ridges,  and  over  all  a 
cheerless,  unglowing  canopy,  apparently  made  of  wet  blotting-paper. 
From  time  to  time  a  flurry  of  fine  rain  blew  along  like  a  pufFof  smoke 
across  the  dots  of  distant  fishing  boats,  very  few,  very  scattered,  very  solid 
and  motionless  against  an  ever  dissolving,  ever  re-forming  sky-line. 

Those  flurries,  and  the  steady  rolling  of  the  ship,  accounted  for  the 
emptiness  of  the  decks  favouring  my  reminiscent  mood. 

It  might  have  been  a  day  of  five-and-thirty  years  ago,  when  there  was 
on  this  and  every  other  sea  more  sails  and  less  smoke-stacks  to  be  seen. 
Yet,  thanks  to  the  unchangeable  sea,  I  could  have  given  myself  up  to  the 
illusion  bringing  the  past  close  to  the  future,  if  it  had  not  been  for  the 
periodical  transit  across  my  gaze  of  a  German  passenger.  He  was  march- 
ing round  and  round  the  boat-deck  with  characteristic  determination.  Two 
sturdy  boys  gambolled  round  him  in  his  progress  like  two  small  disor- 
derly satellites  round  their  parent  planet.  He  was  bringing  them  home 
from  their  school  in  England  for  their  holiday.  What  could  have  induced 
him  to  entrust  his  offspring  to  the  unhealthy  influences  of  that  effete, 
corrupt,  rotten  and  criminal  country,  I  cannot  imagine.  It  could  hardly 
have  been  from  motives  of  economy.  I  did  not  speak  to  him.  He  trod 
the  deck  of  that  decadent  British  ship  with  a  scornful  foot,  while  his  breast 
(and  to  some  extent  his  stomach, too)  appeared  expanded  by  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  superior  destiny.  Later,  I  could  observe  the  same  trucu- 
lent bearing,  touched  with  the  racial  grotesqueness,  in  the  men  of  the 
Landwehr  corps,  the  first  that  passed  through  Cracow  to  reinforce  the 
Austrian  Army  in  Eastern  Galicia.  Indeed,  the  haughty  passenger  might 
very  well  have  been,  most  probably  was,  an  officer  of  the  Landwehr;  and 
perhaps  those  two  fine,  active  boys  are  orphans  by  now.  Thus  things 
acquire  significance  by  the  lapse  of  time.  A  citizen,  a  father,  a  warrior,  a 

C   84   ] 


JOSEPH  COJVRAD 

mote  in  the  dust-cloud  of  six  million  of  fighting  particles,  still  tossed  East 
or  West  in  the  lurid  tempest,  or  already  snapped  up,  an  unconsidered 
trifle,  in  thejawsof  war,  his  very  humanity  was  not  consciously  impressed 
on  my  mind  at  the  time.  Mainly,  for  me,  he  was  a  sharp  tapping  of  heels 
round  the  corner  of  the  deck-house,  a  white  yachting-cap  and  a  green 
overcoat  getting  periodically  between  ,my  eyes  and  the  shifting  cloud- 
horizon  of  the  ashy-green  North  Sea.  He  was  but  a  shadowy  intrusion 
and  a  disregarded  one,  for  far  away  there  to  the  West,  in  the  direction 
of  the  Dogger  Bank,  where  fishermen  go  seeking  their  daily  bread  and 
sometimes  find  their  graves,  I  could  behold  an  experience  of  my  own  in 
the  winter  of  1 881 ,  not  of  war  truly,  but  of  a  fairly  lively  contest  with  the 
elements  which  were  very  angry  indeed. 

There  had  been  a  troublesome  week  of  it,  including  one  hateful  night — 
or  a  night  of  hate  (  it  is  n't  for  nothing  that  the  North  Sea  is  also  called  the 
German  Ocean)  —  when  all  the  fury  stored  in  its  heart  seemed  concen- 
trated on  one  ship  which  could  do  no  better  than  to  float  on  her  side  in  an 
unnatural,  disagreeable,  precarious,  and  altogether  intolerable  manner. 
There  were  on  board  besides  myself,  seventeen  men,  all  good  and  true, 
including  a  round  enormous  Dutchman  who,  in  those  hours  between  sun- 
set and  sunrise,  managed  to  lose  his  blown-out  appearance  somehow, 
became  as  it  were  deflated,  and  thereafter  for  a  long  time  moved  in 
our  midst  wrinkled  and  slack  all  over  like  a  half-collapsed  balloon.  The 
whimpering  of  our  deck-boy,  a  skinny,  impressionable  little  scarecrow 
out  of  a  training-ship,  for  whom,  because  of  the  tender  immaturity  of  his 
nerves,  this  display  of  German  Ocean  frightfulness  was  too  much  (  before 
the  year  was  out  he  developed  into  a  sufficiently  cheeky  young  ruffian), 
his  desolate  whimpering,  I  say,  heard  between  the  gusts  of  that  black, 
savage  night,  was  much  more  present  to  my  mind  and  indeed  to  my 
senses,  than  the  green  overcoat  and  the  white  cap  of  the  German  passen- 
ger circling  the  deck  indefatigably,  attended  by  his  two  gyrating  children. 

"That's  a  very  nice  gentleman."  This  information,  together  with  the 
fact  that  he  was  a  widower  and  a  regular  passenger  twice  a  year  by 

C  «5  1 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

the  ship,  was  communicated  to  me  suddenly  by  our  captain.  At  intervals 
through  the  day  he  would  pop  out  of  his  cabin  and  offer  me  short  snatches 
of  conversation.  He  owned  a  simple  soul  and  a  not  very  entertaining 
mind,  and  he  was,  without  malice  and,  I  believe,  quite  unconsciously,  a 
warm  Germanophil.  And  no  wonder!  As  he  told  me  himself,  he  had 
been  fifteen  years  on  that  run,  and  spent  almost  as  much  of  his  life  in 
Germany  as  in  England. 

"Wonderful  people  they  are,"  he  repeated  from  time  to  time,  with- 
out entering  into  particulars,  but  with  many  nods  of  sagacious  obstinacy. 
What  he  knew  of  them,  I  suppose,  were  a  few  commercial  travellers  and 
small  merchants,  most  likely.  But  I  had  observed  long  before  that  Ger- 
man genius  has  a  hypnotising  power  over  half-baked  souls  and  half- 
lighted  minds.  There  is  an  immense  force  of  suggestion  in  highly  organ- 
ised mediocrity.  Had  it  not  hypnotised  half  Europe?  My  man  was  very 
much  under  the  spell  of  German  excellence.  On  the  other  hand,  his  con- 
tempt for  France  was  equally  general  and  unbounded.  I  tried  to  advance 
some  arguments  against  this  position,  but  I  only  succeeded  in  making  him 
hostile  to  myself.  "  I  believe  you  are  a  Frenchman  yourself,"  he  snarled 
at  last,  giving  me  an  intensely  suspicious  look  ;  and  forthwith  broke  off 
communications  with  a  man  of  such  unsound  sympathies. 

Hourby  hourthe  blotting-paper  sky  and  the  great  flat  greenish  smudge 
of  the  sea  had  been  taking  on  a  darker  tone,  without  any  change  in  their 
colouring  and  texture.  Evening  was  coming  on  over  the  North  Sea.  Black 
uninteresting  hummocks  of  land  appeared,  dotting  the  duskiness  of  water 
and  clouds  in  the  eastern  board;  tops  of  islands  fringing  the  German 
shore.  While  I  was  looking  at  their  antics  amongst  the  waves — and  for 
all  their  manifest  solidity  they  were  very  elusive  things  in  the  failing  light 
— another  passenger  came  out  on  deck.  This  one  wore  a  dark  overcoat 
and  a  grey  cap.  The  yellow  leather  strap  of  his  binocular-case  crossed 
his  chest.  His  elderly  red  cheeks  nourished  but  a  very  thin  crop  of  short 
white  hairs,  and  the  end  of  his  nose  was  so  perfectly  round  that  it  deter- 
mined the  whole  character  of  his  physiognomy.  Indeed,  nothing  else  in  it 

[  86  :] 


JOSEPH  COJVRAD 

had  the  slightest  chance  to  assert  itself.  His  disposition,  unlike  the  wid- 
ower's, appeared  to  be  mild  and  humane.  He  offered  me  the  loan  of  his 
glasses.  He  had  a  wife  and  some  small  children  concealed  in  the  depths 
of  the  ship,  and  he  thought  that  they  were  very  well  where  they  were. 
His  eldest  son  was  about  the  decks  somewhere. 

"  We  are  Americans,"  he  remarked  weightily,  but  in  a  rather  peculiar 
tone.  He  spoke  English  with  the  accent  of  our  captain's  "wonderful 
people,"  and  proceeded  to  give  me  the  history  of  the  family's  crossing 
the  Atlantic  in  a  White  Star  ship.  They  remained  in  England  just  the 
time  necessary  for  a  railway  journey  from  Liverpool  to  Harwich.  His 
people  (those  in  the  depths  of  the  ship,  I  suppose)  were  naturally  a  little 
tired. 

At  that  moment  a  young  man  of  about  twenty,  his  son,  rushed  up  to 
us  from  the  fore-deck  in  a  state  of  intense  elation.  "Hurrah!"  he  cried 
under  his  breath,  "The  first  German  light!  Hurrah!" 

And  those  two  American  citizens  shook  hands  on  it  with  the  greatest 
fervour,  while  I  turned  away  and  received  full  in  the  eyes  the  brilliant 
wink  of  the  Borkum  lighthouse  squatting  low  down  in  the  darkness.  The 
shade  of  the  night  had  settled  on  the  North  Sea. 

I  do  not  think  I  have  ever  seen  before  a  night  so  full  of  lights.  The 
great  change  of  sea-life  since  my  time  was  brought  home  to  me.  I  had 
been  conscious  all  day  of  an  interminable  procession  of  steamers.  They 
went  on  and  on  as  if  in  chase  of  each  other,  the  Baltic  trade,  the  trade  of 
Scandinavia,  of  Denmark,  of  Germany,  pitching  heavily  into  a  head-sea 
and  bound  for  the  gateway  of  Dover  Strait.  Singly,  and  in  small  compa- 
nies of  two  or  three,  they  emerged  from  the  dull,  colourless,  sunless  dis- 
tances ahead,  as  if  the  supply  of  rather  roughly  finished  mechanical  toys 
were  inexhau.stible  in  some  mysterious  cheap  store,  away  there,  below 
the  grey  curve  of  the  earth.  Cargo  .steam-vessels  have  reached  by  this 
time  a  height  of  utilitarian  ugliness  which,  when  one  reflects  that  this  is 
the  product  of  human  ingenuity,  strikes  hopeless  awe  into  one.  These 
dismal  creations  look  still  uglier  at  sea  than  in  port,  and  with  an  added 

:  «7  3 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

touch  of  the  ridiculous.  Their  rolling  waddle  when  seen  at  a  certain  angle, 
their  abrupt  clockwork  nodding  in  a  seaway, so  unlike  the  soaring  lift  and 
swing  of  a  craft  under  sail,  have  in  them  something  caricatural,  a  sug- 
gestion of  low  parody  directed  at  noble  predecessors  by  an  improved 
generation  of  dull,  mechanical  toilers,  conceited  and  without  grace. 

When  they  switched  on  (  each  of  these  unlovely  cargo-tanks  carried 
tame  lightning  within  its  slab-sided  body),  when  they  switched  on  their 
lamps  they  spangled  the  night  with  the  cheap,  electric,  shop-glitter,  here, 
there,  and  everywhere,  as  of  some  High  Street,  broken  up  and  washed 
out  to  sea.  Later,  Heligoland  cut  into  the  overhead  darkness  with  its 
powerful  beam ,  infinitely  prolonged  out  of  unfathomable  night  under  the 
clouds. 

I  remained  on  deck  till  we  stopped  and  a  steam  pilot-boat,  so  over- 
lighted  amidships  that  one  could  not  make  out  her  complete  shape,  glided 
across  our  bows  and  sent  a  pilot  on  board.  I  fear  that  the  oar,  as  a  work- 
ing implement,  shall  become  presently  as  obsolete  as  the  sail.  The  pilot 
boarded  us  in  a  motor  dinghy.  More  and  more  is  mankind  reducing  its 
physical  activities  to  pulling  levers  and  twirling  little  wheels.  Progress  ! 
Yet  the  older  methods  of  meeting  natural  forces  demanded  intelligence 
too;  an  equally  fine  readiness  of  wits.  And  readiness  of  wits  working  in 
combination  with  the  strength  of  muscles  made  a  more  complete  man. 

It  was  really  a  surprisingly  small  dinghy,  and  it  ran  to  and  fro  like  a 
water-insect  fussing  noisily  down  there  with  immense  self-importance. 
Within  hail  of  us  the  hull  of  the  Elbe  Lightship  floated  all  dark  and  silent 
under  its  enormous, round,  service  lantern;  a  faithful  black  shadow  watch- 
ing the  broad  estuary  full  of  lights. 

Such  was  my  first  view  of  the  Elbe  approached  under  the  wings  of 
peace  already  spread  for  a  flight  away  from  the  luckless  shores  of  Eu- 
rope. Our  visual  impressions  remain  with  us  so  persistently  that  I  find  it 
extremely  difficult  to  hold  fast  to  the  rational  belief  that  now  everything 
is  dark  over  there,  that  the  Elbe  Lightship  has  been  towed  away  from 
its  post  of  duty,  the  triumphant  beam  of  Heligoland  extinguished,  and 

:  88  ] 


JOSEPH  COJ^RAD 

the  pilot-boat  laid  up,  or  turned  to  warlike  uses  for  lack  of  its  proper 
work  to  do.  And  obviously  it  must  be  so. 

Any  trickle  of  oversea  trade  that  passes  yet  that  way  must  be  crcei>- 
ing  along  cautiously,  with  the  unlighted,  war-blighted,  black  coast  close 
on  one,  and  sudden  death  on  the  other  hand.  For  all  the  space  we  steamed 
through  on  that  Sunday  evening  must  be  now  one  great  mine  field,  sown 
thickly  with  the  seeds  of  hate;  while  submarines  steal  out  to  sea,  over 
the  very  spot,  perhaps,  where  the  insect-dinghy  put  a  pilot  on  board  of 
us  with  so  much  fussy  importance.  Mines,  submarines.  The  last  word  in 
sea  warfare!  Progress — impressively  disclosed  by  this  war. 

There  have  been  other  wars  !  Wars  not  inferior  in  the  greatness  of  the 
stake,  and  iti  the  fierce  animosity  of  feelings.  During  that  one  which  was 
finished  a  hundred  years  ago,  it  happened  that  while  the  English  fleet 
was  keeping  watch  on  Brest,  an  American,  perhaps  Fulton  himself,  of- 
fered to  the  maritime  Prefect  of  the  port  and  to  the  French  Admiral, 
an  invention  which  would  sink  the  unsuspecting  English  ships  one  after 
another — or  at  any  rate,  most  of  them.  The  offer  was  not  even  taken  into 
consideration  ;  and  the  Prefect  ends  his  report  to  the  Minister  of  Marine 
in  Paris  with  a  fine  phrase  of  indignation:  "  It  is  not  the  sort  of  death  one 
would  deal  to  brave  men." 

And,  behold,  before  history  had  time  to  hatch  another  war  of  the  like 
proportions  in  the  intensity  of  aroused  passions  and  the  greatness  of  is- 
sues, the  dead  flavour  of  archaism  descended  on  the  manly  sentiment 
of  those  self-denying  words.  Mankind  had  been  demoralised  since  by  its 
own  mastery  of  mechanical  appliances.  Its  spirit  apparently  is  so  weak 
now,  and  its  flesh  has  grown  so  strong,  that  it  will  face  any  deadly  horror 
of  destruction  and  cannot  resist  the  temptation  to  use  any  stealthy,  mur- 
derous contrivance.  It  has  become  the  intoxicated  slave  of  its  own  de- 
testable ingenuity.  It  is  true,  too,  that  since  the  Napoleonic  times  another 
sort  of  war  doctrine  has  been  inculcated  to  a  nation,  and  held  out  to  the 
world. 

C  89  ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 


IV 


On  this  journey  of  ours,  which  for  me  was  essentially  not  a  progress  but 
a  retracing  of  footsteps  on  a  road  travelled  before,  I  had  no  beacons  to 
look  out  for  in  Germany.  I  had  never  lingered  in  that  land,  which,  as 
a  whole,  is  so  singularly  barren  of  memorable  manifestations  of  gener- 
ous sympathies  and  magnanimous  impulses.  An  ineradicable,  invincible 
provincialism  of  envy  and  vanity  clings  to  the  forms  of  its  thought  like 
a  frowsy  garment.  Even  while  yet  very  young  I  turned  my  eyes  away 
from  it  instinctively,  as  from  a  threatening  phantom.  I  believe  that  chil- 
dren and  dogs  have,  in  their  innocence,  a  special  power  of  perception  as 
far  as  spectral  apparitions  and  coming  misfortunes  are  concerned. 

I  let  myself  be  carried  through  Germany  as  if  it  were  pure  space, 
without  sights,  without  sounds.  No  whispers  of  the  war  reached  my  vol- 
untary abstraction.  And  perhaps  not  so  very  voluntary,  after  all!  Each  of 
us  is  a  fascinating  spectacle  to  himself,  and  I  had  to  watch  my  own  per- 
sonality returning  from  another  world,  as  it  were,  to  revisit  the  glimpses 
of  old  moons.  Considering  the  condition  of  humanity,  I  am,  perhaps,  not 
so  much  to  blame  for  giving  myself  up  to  that  occupation.  We  prize  the 
sensation  of  our  continuity,  and  we  can  only  capture  it  in  that  way.  By 
watching. 

We  arrived  in  Cracow  late  at  night.  After  a  scrambly  supper,  I  said 
to  my  eldest  boy,  "I  can't  go  to  bed.  I  must  go  out  for  a  look  round. 
Coming  ?  '  ' 

He  was  ready  enough.  For  him  all  this  was  part  of  the  interesting  ad- 
venture of  the  whole  journey.  We  stepped  out  of  the  portal  of  the  hotel 
into  an  empty  street,  very  silent  and  bright  with  moonlight.  I  was  indeed 
revisiting  the  glimpses  of  the  moon.  I  felt  so  much  like  a  ghost  that  the 
discovery  that  I  could  remember  such  material  things  as  the  right  turn  to 
take  and  the  general  direction  of  the  street  gave  me  a  moment  of  wdst- 
ful  surprise. 

The  street,  straight  and  narrow,  ran  into  the  great  Central  Square 

[  .90  1 


JOSEPH  COjVRAD 

of  the  town,  the  centre  of  its  affairs  and  of  the  lighter  side  of  its  life.  We 
could  see  at  the  far  end  of  the  street  a  promising  widening  of  space.  At 
the  corner  an  unassuming  (but  armed)  policeman,  wearing  ceremoni- 
ously at  midnight  a  pair  of  white  gloves,  which  made  his  big  hands  ex- 
tremely noticeable,  turned  his  head  to  look  at  the  grizzled  foreigner 
holding  forth  in  a  strange  tongue  to  a  youth  on  whose  arm  he  leaned. 

The  square,  immense  in  its  solitude, was  full  to  the  brim  of  moonlight. 
The  garland  of  lights  at  the  foot  of  the  houses  seemed  to  burn  at  the  bot- 
tom of  a  bluish  pool.  I  noticed  with  intimate  satisfaction  that  the  unneces- 
sary trees  the  Municipality  persisted  in  sticking  between  the  stones  had 
been  steadily  refusing  to  grow.  They  were  not  a  bit  bigger  than  the  poor 
victims  I  could  remember.  Also,  the  paving  operations  seemed  to  be 
exactly  at  the  same  point  at  which  I  left  them  forty  years  before.  There 
were  the  dull,  torn-up  patches  on  that  lighted  expanse,  the  piles  of  pav- 
ing material  looking  ominously  black,  like  heads  of  rocks  on  a  silvery 
sea.  Who  was  it  that  said  Time  works  wonders.?  What  an  exploded  su- 
perstition !  As  far  as  these  trees  and  these  paving-stones  were  concerned 
it  had  worked  nothing.  The  suspicion  of  the  unchangeableness  of  things 
already  vaguely  suggested  to  my  senses  by  our  rapid  drive  from  the  rail- 
way station  and  by  the  short  walk,  was  agreeably  strengthened  within 
me. 

"  We  are  now  on  the  line  A.B.,"  I  said  to  my  companion,  importantly. 

It  was  the  name  bestowed  in  my  time  to  that  .side  of  the  square  by  the 
senior  .students  of  that  town  of  classical  learning  and  historical  relics.  The 
common  citizens  knew  nothing  of  it,  and  even  if  they  had,  would  not  have 
dreamed  of  taking  it  seriously.  He  who  used  it  was  of  the  initiated,  be- 
longed to  the  Schools.  We  youngsters  regarded  that  name  as  a  fine  jest, 
the  invention  of  a  mo.st  excellent  fancy.  Even  as  I  uttered  it  to  my  boy 
I  experienced  again  that  sense  of  privilege,  of  initiation.  And  then,  hap- 
pening to  look  up  at  the  wall,  I  saw  in  the  light  of  the  corner  lamp,  a 
white,  cast-iron  tablet  fixed  thereon,  bearing  an  inscription  in  raised  black 
letters,  thus:  "Line  A.B."  Heavens!  The  name  had  been  adopted  otti- 

C   91    2 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

daily  !  Any  town  urchin,  any  guttersnipe,  any  herb-selling  woman  of  the 
market-place,  any  wandering  Beotian,  was  free  to  talk  of  the  line  A.B.,  to 
walk  on  the  line  A. B.,  to  appoint  to  meet  his  friends  on  the  line  A.B.  It 
had  become  a  mere  name  in  a  directory.  I  was  stunned  by  the  extreme 
mutability  of  things.  Time  coM/(i  work  wonders,  and  no  mistake.  A  Muni- 
cipality had  stolen  an  invention  of  excellent  fancy,  and  a  fine  jest  had 
turned  into  a  horrid  piece  of  cast  iron. 

I  proposed  that  we  should  walk  to  the  other  end  of  the  line,  using  the 
profaned  name,  not  only  without  gusto,  but  with  positive  distaste.  And 
this,  too,  was  one  of  the  wonders  of  Time,  for  a  bare  minute  had  worked 
that  change.  There  was  at  the  end  of  the  line  a  certain  street  I  wanted 
to  look  at,  I  explained  to  my  companion. 

To  our  right  the  unequal  massive  towers  of  St.  Mary's  Church  soared 
aloft  into  the  ethereal  radiance  of  the  air,  very  black  on  their  shaded  sides, 
glowing  with  a  soft  phosphorescent  sheen  on  the  others.  In  the  distance 
the  Florian  Gate,  thick  and  squat  under  its  pointed  roof,  barred  the  street 
with  the  square  shoulders  of  the  old  city  wall.  In  the  narrow  brilliantly 
pale  vista  of  bluish  flagstones  and  silvery  fronts  of  houses,  its  black  arch- 
way stood  out  small  but  very  distinct. 

There  was  not  a  soul  in  sight,  and  not  even  the  echo  of  a  footstep  for 
our  ears.  Into  this  coldly  illuminated  and  dumb  emptiness  there  issued 
out  of  my  aroused  memory  a  small  boy  of  eleven,  wending  his  way,  not 
very  fast,  to  a  preparatory  school  for  day-pupils  on  the  second  floor  of 
the  third  house  down  from  Florian  Gate.  It  was  in  the  winter  months  of 
1868.  At  eight  o'clock  of  every  morning  that  God  made,  sleet  or  shine, 
I  walked  up  Florian  Street.  But  of  the  school  I  remember  very  little.  I 
believe  that  one  of  my  co-sufferers  there  has  become  a  much  appreciated 
editor  of  historical  documents.  But  I  didn't  suffer  very  much  from  the 
various  imperfections  of  my  first  school.  I  was  rather  indifferent  to  school 
troubles.  I  had  a  private  gnawing  worm  of  my  own.  This  was  the  time 
of  my  father's  last  illness.  Every  evening  at  seven,  turning  my  back  on 
the  Florian  Gate,  I  walked  all  the  way  to  a  big  old  house  in  a  quiet  little 

C  92  ^ 


JOSEPH  COjYRAD 

Street  a  good  distance  beyond  the  Great  Square  .There,  in  a  large  draw- 
ing-room, panelled  and  bare,  with  heavy  cornices  and  a  lofty  ceiling,  in 
a  little  oasis  of  light  made  by  two  candles  in  a  desert  of  dusk,  I  sat  at  a 
little  table  to  worry  and  ink  myself  all  over  till  the  task  of  preparation 
was  done.  The  table  of  my  toil  faced  a  tall  white  double  door  which  was 
kept  closed;  but  now  and  then  it  would  come  ajar  and  a  nun  in  a  white 
coif  would  squeeze  herself  through,  glide  across  the  room  and  disappear. 
There  were  two  of  these  noiseless  nursing  nuns.  Their  voices  were  sel- 
dom heard.  For  indeed  what  could  they  have  to  say!  When  they  did 
speak  to  me,  it  was  with  their  lips  hardly  moving,  in  a  claustral  clear 
whisper.  Domestic  matters  were  ordered  by  the  elderly  housekeeper  of 
our  neighbour  on  the  second  floor,  a  Canon  of  the  Cathedral,  lent  for 
the  emergency.  She  too  spoke  but  seldom.  She  wore  a  black  dress  with 
a  cross  hanging  by  a  chain  on  her  ample  bosom.  And  though  when  she 
spoke  she  moved  her  lips  more  than  the  nuns,  she  never  let  her  voice 
rise  above  a  peacefully  murmuring  note.  The  air  around  me  was  all  pietv, 
resignation  and  silence. 

I  don't  know  what  would  have  become  of  me  if  I  had  not  been  a  read- 
ing boy.  My  lessons  done  I  would  have  had  nothing  to  do  but  sit  and 
watch  the  awful  stillness  of  the  sick-room  flow  out  through  the  closed 
white  door  and  coldly  enfold  my  scared  heart.  I  suppose  that  in  a  futile 
childish  way  I  would  have  gone  crazy.  But  I  was  a  reading  boy.  There 
were  many  books  about,  lying  on  con.soles,  on  tables,  and  even  on  the 
floor,  for  we  had  not  had  time  to  settle  down.  I  read!  What  did  I  not 
read!  Sometimes  the  eldest  nun  gliding  up  and  casting  a  mistru.stful  glance 
at  the  open  pages  would  lay  her  hand  lightly  on  my  head  and  suggest 
in  a  doubtful  whisper:  "  Perhaps  it  is  n't  very  good  for  you  to  read  these 
books."  I  would  raise  my  eyes  to  her  face  mutely  and  with  a  vague  ges- 
ture of  giving  it  up  she  would  glide  away. 

Later  in  the  evening,  l)ut  not  always,  I  would  be  permitted  to  tiptoe 
into  the  sick-room  to  say  good-night  to  the  figure  prone  on  the  bed 
which  often  could  not  recognise  my  presence  but  by  a  slow  movement  of 

[  95  :i 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

the  eyes,  put  my  lips  dutifully  to  the  nerveless  hand  lying  on  the  cover- 
let, and  tiptoe  out  again.  Then  I  would  go  to  bed,  in  a  room  at  the  end 
of  a  corridor,  and  often,  not  always,  cry  myself  into  a  good,  sound  sleep. 

I  looked  forward  to  what  was  coming  with  an  incredulous  terror.  I 
turned  my  eyes  from  it,  sometimes  with  success;  and  yet  all  the  time  I 
had  an  awful  sensation  of  the  inevitable.  I  had  also  moments  of  revolt 
which  stripped  off  me  some  of  my  simple  trust  in  the  government  of  the 
universe.  But  when  the  inevitable  entered  the  sick-room  and  the  white 
door  was  thrown  wide  open,  I  don't  think  I  found  a  single  tear  to  shed. 
I  have  a  suspicion  that  the  Canon's  housekeeper  looked  upon  me  as  the 
most  callous  little  wretch  on  earth. 

The  day  of  the  funeral  came  in  due  course,  and  all  the  generous 
"Youth  of  the  Schools,"  the  grave  Senate  of  the  University,  the  dele- 
gations of  the  trade-guilds,  might  have  obtained  (if  they  cared  )  de  visu 
evidence  of  the  callousness  of  the  little  wretch.  There  was  nothing  in  my 
aching  head  but  a  few  words,  some  such  stupid  sentences  as:  "  It's  done," 
or  "It's  accomplished"  (in  Polish  it  is  much  shorter),  or  something  of 
the  sort,  repeating  itself  endlessly.  The  long  procession  moved  on  out  of 
the  little  street,  down  a  long  street,  past  the  Gothic  portal  of  St.  Mary's 
between  its  unequal  towers,  towards  the  Florian  Gate. 

In  the  moonlight-flooded  silence  of  the  old  town  of  glorious  tombs  and 
tragic  memories  I  could  see  again  the  small  boy  of  that  day  following  a 
hearse;  a  space  kept  clear  in  which  I  walked  alone,  conscious  of  an  enor- 
mous following,  the  clumsy  swaying  of  the  tall  black  machine,  the  chant- 
ing of  the  surpliced  clergy  at  the  head,  the  flames  of  tapers  passing 
under  the  low  archway  of  the  gate,  the  rows  of  bared  heads  on  the  pave- 
ments with  fixed,  serious  eyes.  Half  the  population  had  turned  out  on 
that  fine  May  afternoon.  They  had  not  come  to  honour  a  great  achieve- 
ment, or  even  some  splendid  failure.  The  dead  and  they  were  victims 
alike  of  an  unrelenting  destiny  which  cut  them  off  from  every  path  of 
merit  and  glory.  They  had  come  only  to  render  homage  to  the  ardent 
fidelity  of  the  man  whose  life  had  been  a  fearless  confession  in  word  and 

C   94   ] 


JOSEPH  COjYRAD 

deed  of  a  creed  which  the  simplest  heart  in  that  crowd  could  feel  and 
understand. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  if  I  remained  longer  there  in  that  narrow  street 
I  should  become  the  helpless  prey  of  the  Shadows  I  had  called  up.  They 
were  crowding  upon  me,  enigmatic  and  insistent,  in  their  clinging  air  of 
the  grave  that  tasted  of  dust  and  in  the  bitter  vanity  of  all  hopes. 

"Let's  go  back  to  the  hotel,  my  boy,"  I  said.  "It's  getting  late." 

It  will  be  easily  understood  that  I  neither  thought  nor  dreamt  that  night 
of  a  possible  war.  For  the  next  two  days  I  went  about  amongst  my  fel- 
low men,  who  welcomed  me  with  the  utmost  consideration  and  friendli- 
ness, but  unanimously  derided  my  fears  of  a  war.  They  would  not  believe 
in  it.  It  was  impossible.  On  the  evening  of  the  second  day  I  was  in  the 
hotel's  smoking-room,  an  irrationally  private  apartment,  a  sanctuary  for 
a  few  choice  minds  of  the  town,  always  pervaded  by  a  dim  religious  light, 
and  more  hushed  than  any  club  reading-room  I've  ever  been  in.  Gath- 
ered into  a  small  knot,  we  were  discussing  the  situation  in  subdued  tones 
suitable  to  the  genius  of  the  place. 

A  gentleman  with  a  fine  head  of  white  hair  suddenly  pointed  an  impa- 
tient finger  in  my  direction  and  apostrophised  me. 

"  What  I  want  to  know  is  whether,  should  there  be  war,  England 
would  come  in." 

The  time  to  draw  a  breath,  and  I  spoke  out  for  the  Cabinet  without 
faltering. 

"  Most  assuredly.  I  should  think  all  Europe  knows  that  by  this  time." 

He  took  hold  of  the  lapel  of  my  coat  and,  giving  it  a  slight  jerk  for 
greater  emphasis,  said  forcibly: 

"Then  if  England  will,  as  you  say,  and  all  the  world  knows  it,  there 
can  be  no  war.  Germany  won't  be  so  mad  as  that." 

On  the  morrow  by  noon  we  read  of  the  German  ultimatum.  The  day 
after  came  the  declaration  of  war  and  the  Austrian  mobilisation  order. 
We  were  fairly  caught.  All  that  remained  for  me  to  do  was  to  get  my 
party  out  of  the  way  of  eventual  shells.  The  best  move  which  occurred 

C  95  J 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

to  me  was  to  snatch  them  up  instantly  into  the  mountains  to  a  Pohsh 
health  resort  of  great  repute — which  I  did  (at  the  rate  of  one  hundred 
miles  in  eleven  hours  )  by  the  last  civilian  train  permitted  to  leave  Cra- 
cow for  the  next  three  weeks. 

And  there  we  remained  amongst  the  Poles  from  all  parts  of  Poland, 
not  officially  interned,  but  simply  unable  to  obtain  permission  to  travel 
by  train  or  road.  It  was  a  wonderful,  a  poignant  two  months.  This  is  not 
the  time,  and  perhaps  not  the  place,  to  enlarge  upon  the  tragic  charac- 
ter of  the  situation  ;  a  whole  people  seeing  the  culmination  of  its  misfor- 
tunes in  a  final  catastrophe,  unable  to  trust  any  one,  to  appeal  to  any  one, 
to  look  for  help  from  any  quarter  ;  deprived  of  all  hope,  and  even  of  its 
last  illusions,  and  unable  in  the  trouble  of  minds  and  the  unrest  of  con- 
sciences to  take  refuge  in  stoical  acceptance.  I  have  seen  all  this.  And  I 
am  glad  I  have  not  so  many  years  left  me  to  remember  that  appalling 
feeling  of  inexorable  Fate,  tangible,  palpable,  come  after  so  many  cruel 
years,  a  figure  of  dread,  murmuring  with  iron  lips  the  final  words: 
"Ruin — and  Extinction." 

But  enough  of  this.  For  our  little  band  there  was  the  awful  anguish 
of  incertitude  as  to  the  real  nature  of  events  in  the  West.  It  is  difficult 
to  give  an  idea  how  ugly  and  dangerous  things  looked  to  us  over  there. 
Belgium  knocked  down  and  trampled  out  of  existence,  France  giving  in 
under  repeated  blows,  a  military  collapse  like  that  of  1870,  and  England 
involved  in  that  disastrous  alliance,  her  army  sacrificed,  her  people  in  a 
panic!  Polish  papers,  of  course,  had  no  other  than  German  sources  of 
information.  Naturally,  we  did  not  believe  all  we  heard,  but  it  was  some- 
times excessively  difficult  to  react  with  sufficient  firmness.  We  used  to 
shut  our  door,  and  there,  away  from  everybody,  we  sat  weighing  the 
news,  hunting  up  discrepancies,  scenting  lies,  finding  reasons  for  hope- 
fulness, and  generally  cheering  each  other  up.  But  it  was  a  beastly  time. 
People  used  to  come  to  me  with  very  serious  news  and  ask,  "What  do 
you  think  of  it.^"  Ai^d  my  invariable  answer  was,  "Whatever  has  hap- 
pened or  is  going  to  happen,  whoever  wants  to  make  peace,  you  may 

:  90  '        , 


JOSEPH  COjYRAD 

be  certain  that  England  will  not  make  it,  not  for  ten  years,  if  necessary." 
But  enough  of  this,  too.  Through  the  unremitting  efforts  of  Polish 
friends  we  obtained  at  last  the  permission  to  travel  to  Vienna.  Once  there, 
the  wing  of  the  American  Eagle  was  extended  over  our  uneasy  heads. 
We  cannot  be  sufficiently  grateful  to  the  American  Ambassador  (who 
all  along  interested  himself  in  our  fate  )  for  his  exertions  on  our  behalf, 
his  invaluable  assistance,  and  the  real  friendliness  of  his  reception  in 
Vienna.  Owing  to  Mr.  Penfield's  action  we  obtained  permission  to  leave 
Austria.  And  it  was  a  near  thing,  for  his  Excellency  has  informed  my 
American  publishers  since  that  a  week  later  orders  were  issued  to  have 
us  detained  until  the  end  of  the  war.  However,  we  effected  our  hair's- 
breadth  escape  into  Italy  and,  reaching  Genoa,  took  passage  in  a  Dutch 
mail-steamer,  homeward  bound  from  Java,  with  London  as  a  port  of  call. 
On  that  sea  route  I  might  have  picked  up  a  memory  at  every  mile  if  the 
past  had  not  been  eclipsed  by  the  tremendous  actuality.  We  saw  the  signs 
of  it  in  the  emptiness  of  the  Mediterranean,  the  aspect  of  Gibraltar,  the 
misty  glimpse  in  the  Bay  of  Biscay  of  an  outward-bound  convoy  of  trans- 
ports, in  the  presence  of  British  submarines  in  the  Channel.  Innumerable 
drifters  flying  the  naval  flag  dotted  the  narrow  waters,  and  two  naval 
officers  coming  on  board  off'  the  South  Foreland  piloted  the  ship  through 
the  Downs. 

The  Downs!  There  they  were,  thick  with  the  memories  of  my  sea 
life.  But  what  were  to  me  now  the  futilities  of  individual  past!  As  our 
ship's  head  swung  into  the  estuary  of  the  Thames  a  deep,  yet  faint,  con- 
cussion passed  through  the  air,  a  shock  rather  than  a  sound,  which,  miss- 
ing my  ear,  found  its  way  straight  into  my  heart.  Turning  instinctively 
to  look  at  my  boys,  I  happened  to  meet  my  wife's  eyes.  She  also  had 
felt  profoundly,  coming  from  far  away  across  the  grey  distances  of  the 
sea,  the  faint  boom  of  the  big  guns  at  work  on  the  coast  of  Flanders — 
shaping  the  future. 

Joseph  Conrad 

C  97  H 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 


LIBERTA  NELLA  VITA 

1_/A  un'  anno,  1'  orror  della  guerra,  e  1'  afFanno  della  coscienza,  per  com- 
prenderne  la  inevitabile  nécessita.  L'Antico  Libro  dice:  "La  spaJa  levata 
per  uccidere guarisce  taholta,"  e  a  nostri  giorni,  una  povera  donna  del  po- 
polo  firmo  una  carta  questo  affirmando:  "&^  la  guerra,  per  distrugger  la 
guerra;  "  e  la  povera  donna  del  popolo  ha  due  figlioli  al  fronte. 

—  Infinita  è  la  strage,  e  in  ogni  terra,  disperazione  e  protesta! 

— Per  tanto  dolore  nel  mondo,  per  ogni  giovane  esistenza  troncata, 

sia  conquista  e  diritto,  per  ogni  Patria,  il  sommo  dei  beni  :  La  liberta 

nella  Vita. 

Eleonora  Duse 

II  Cerro, 

Boscolungo  Pistoiese 


THE  RIGHT  TO  LIBERTY 

[translation] 

r  OR  the  past  year  the  horror  of  war,  and  the  struggle  of  our  minds  to 
comprehend  its  inevitable  necessity  !  —  Holy  Writ  says:"  For  all  they  that 
take  the  sword  shall  perish  with  the  sword,"  and  now  in  our  day  a  poor 
woman  of  the  people  ends  her  letter  with  these  words:  "There  must  be 
war,  that  war  may  perish" — and  this  poor  woman  of  the  people  has  two 
sons  at  the  front. 

Infinite  is  the  suffering,  and  over  the  earth  wailing  and  despair! 

Through  all  this  sorrow  in  the  world,  through  all  these  young  lives 

cut  short,  may  victory  bring  to  every  land  the  crown  of  life — the  right 

to  Liberty. 

Eleonora  Duse 

//  Cerro, 

Boscolungo  Pistoiese 

C   98   : 


AUGUSTE  RODIN 
TWO  WOMEN 

FROM  AN   ORIGINAL  WATER-COLOUR  SKETCH 


^ 


"^ 


JOHN  GALSfVORTUr 


HARVEST 


The  sky  to-night  looks  as  if  a  million  bright  angels  were  passing  —  a 
gleaming  cloud-mesh  drawn  across  the  heaven.  One  star,  very  clear, 
shines  beside  a  full  moon  white  as  the  globe-campion  flower.  The  wan 
hills  and  valleys,  the  corn-stooks,  casting  each  its  shadows,  the  grey  boles 
of  the  beeches — all  have  the  remoteness  of  an  inctiable  peace.  And  the 
past  day  was  so  soft,  so  glamorous  ;  such  a  hum,  such  brightness,  and  the 
harvest  going  on.  .  .  . 

This  last  year  millions  have  died  with  energy  but  one  third  spent;  mil- 
lions more  unripe  for  death  will  yet  herald  us  into  the  long  shades  before 
these  shambles  cease — boys  born  just  to  be  the  meat  of  war,  spitted  on 
each  others'  reddened  bayonets,  without  inkling  of  guilt  or  knowledge. 
To  what  shall  we  turn  that  we  may  keep  sane,  watching  this  green,  un- 
ripe corn,  field  on  field,  being  scythed  by  Death  for  none  to  eat?  There 
is  no  solace  in  the  thought:  Death  is  nothing! — save  to  those  who  still 
believe  they  go  straight  to  Paradise.  To  us  who  dare  not  to  know  the 
workings  of  the  Unknowable,  and  in  our  heart  of  hearts  cannot  tell  what, 
if  anything,  becomes  of  us, — to  us,  the  great  majority  of  the  modern 
world  —  life  is  valuable,  good,  a  thing  worth  living  out  for  its  natural 
span.  For,  if  it  were  not,  long  ere  this  we  should  have  sat  with  folded 
arms,  lifting  no  hand  till  the  last  sighing  breath  of  the  human  race  had 
whispered  itself  out  into  the  wind,  and  a  final  darkness  come;  sat,  like 
the  Hindu  Yogi,  watching  the  sun  and  moon  a  little,  and  expired.  The 
moon  would  be  as  white,  and  the  sun  as  golden  if  we  were  gone,  the  hills 
and  valleys  as  mysterious, the  beech-trees  just  as  they  are,  only  the  stooks 
of  corn  would  vanish  with  those  who  garner  them.  If  life  were  not  good  we 
should  make  of  ourselves  dust  indifierently  —  we  human  beings;  quietly, 
peacefully  ;  not  in  murderous  horror  reaped  by  the  curving  volleys,  mown 
oft'  by  rains  of  shrapnel,  and  the  long  yellow  scythe  of  the  foul  gases. 
But  life  is  good,  and  no  living  thing  wishes  to  die;  even  they  who  kill 

C   99  H 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

themselves,  despairing,  resign  out  of  sheer  love  of  life;  out  of  craving 
for  what  they  have  found  too  mutilated  and  starved,  out  of  yearning  for 
their  meed  of  joy  cruelly  frustrated.  And  they  who  die  that  others  may 
live  are  but  those  in  whom  the  life-flame  burns  so  hot  and  bright  that 
they  can  feel  the  life  and  the  longing  to  live  in  others  as  if  it  were  their 
own — more  than  their  own.  Yea,  life  carries  with  it  a  very  passion  for 
existence. 

To  what  then  shall  we  turn  that  we  may  keep  sane,  watching  this  har- 
vest of  too  young  deaths,  the  harvest  of  the  brave,  whose  stocks  are 
raised  before  us,  casting  each  its  shadow  in  the  ironic  moonlight?  Green 
corn  !  Green  corn  ! 

If,  having  watched  those  unripe  blades  reaped  off  and  stacked  so  piti- 
fully, watched  the  great  dark  Waggoner  clear  those  unmellowed  fields, 
we  let  their  sacrifice  be  vain;  if  we  sow  not,  hereafter,  in  a  peaceful 
Earth  that  which  shall  become  harvest  more  golden  than  the  world  has 
seen — then  Shame  on  us,  unending,  in  whatever  land  we  dwell.  .  .  . 

This  harvest  night  is  still.  And  yet,  up  there,  the  bright  angels  are 

passing  over  the  moon.  One  Star! 

John  Galsworthy 

Aigust  28,   1915 


C    TOO    H 


CLAUDE  MONET 
BOATS  ON  A  BEACH 

FROM   AN   EARLY  CRAYON   DRAWING 


EDMUND  GOSSE 


THE  ARROGANCE  AND  SERVILITY  OF  GERMANY 

\\E  abound,  while  the  war  progresses,  with  examples  of  the  calculated 
ferocity  of  the  Germans,  of  their  lack  of  humanity,  of  their  scorn  of  the 
generous  convention  of  behaviour.  But  there  is  a  great  danger  that  on 
reflection,  we  may  be  tempted  to  regard  these  developments  of  savagery 
as  due  to  the  fact  of  war  itself,  to  a  sudden  madness  of  blood-lust,  to 
rage  in  the  face  of  unanticipated  resistance,  even  to  alarm,  the  emotion 
of  terror  being  a  fruitful  source  of  cruelty  as  well  as  of  cowardice.  It  is 
well,  therefore,  lest  we  be  tempted  to  excuse  the  barbarism  of  the  enemy, 
to  cast  our  eyes  backward  and  to  endeavour  to  recall  what  he  was  in 
times  of  peace,  in  his  domestic  surroundings,  unassailed  by  anger  or  fear 
or  ill-humour.  I  make  no  apology,  then,  for  recounting  an  anecdote  which 
illustrates,  I  think,  certain  qualities  which  distinguish  the  German  men- 
tality from  that  of  all  the  other  races  which  call  themselves  civilised.  The 
incident  which  I  will  proceed  to  describe  was  a  trifling  one,  but  the  im- 
pression it  left  upon  my  memory  was  profound. 

In  the  early  summer  of  191 1  my  wife  and  I  joined  our  dear  friends, 
the  Dutch  novelist  Maarten  Maartcns  and  his  daughter,  in  a  motor-trip 
through  parts  of  the  Rhine  Province,  and  in  particular  the  romantic  and 
volcanic  districts  of  the  Eiffel.  Maarten  Maartens  (  who  died  in  Holland 
so  lately  as  the  .3rd  of  August,  1915)  was  the  most  delightful  travelling 
companion,  and  the  perfection  of  his  linguistic  gifts  —  for  he  spoke  Eng- 
lish, French,  Italian  and  German  in  each  case  like  a  native — made  the 
face  of  Europe  one  wide  home  to  him.  Our  tour  was  nearly  over;  we 
had  descended  the  Moselle,  and  had  paused  where  the  Benedictine  Abbey 
of  Laach,  on  the  edge  of  its  serene  and  wood-encircled  crater-lake  offers 
hospitality  to  the  stranger;  and  then  we  went  down  to  the  Rhine  and 
reached  Konigswinter  late  one  afternoon.  At  Konigswinter,  as  travellers 
know, there  is  an  hotel  which  Germans  brag  of  as  "  the  l)ost  in  the  world.  " 
It  is,  in  fact,  or  was  then,  very  large,  sumptuously  furnished,  nobly  situ- 

C  10,  : 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

ated  on  the  bastion  of  the  Rhine,  looking  right  over  to  Drachenfels.  The 
service  was  rapid  and  noiseless,  the  cooking  as  good  as  a  Teuton  kitchen 
can  produce.  It  had  the  air  of  highly-organised  prosperity,  of  a  machine 
exactly  suited  to  harmonise  with  wealth.  To  call  it  "  the  best  hotel  in  the 
world"  is  to  show  a  false  conception  of  excellence  as  applied  to  hotels, 
but  it  presented  everything  that  German  luxury  could  demand. 

We  were  given  a  row  of  excellent  rooms  on  the  first  floor,  with  long 
windows  opening  on  to  a  terrace  which  roofed  the  great  restaurant,  and 
whence  there  was  a  noble  prospect.  We  went  to  bed  early,  and  soon  the 
whole  vast  establishment  seemed  wrapped  in  velvet  silence.  Not  a  sound 
broke  in  the  dark  warm  summer  night,  not  even  a  whisper  from  the 
river.  Suddenly  an  amazing,  an  unintelligible  riot  woke  the  row  of  us  from 
slumber.  The  electric  light,  switched  hurriedly  on,  revealed  that  the  hour 
was  three.  In  front  of  us,  apparently  on  our  terrace,  a  turmoil  was  pro- 
ceeding of  a  character  to  wake  the  dead.  Explosions  of  glass,  what  seemed 
the  deeper  note  of  crockery,  strange  shrieks  of  metal,  bassoon-like  and 
drum-like  noises, adeafening  roar. Turning  oft  the  light,  with  face  pressed 
to  the  window,  there  were  dimly  to  be  distinguished  phantom -objects  de- 
scending from  above  our  heads,  a  shower  of  vague  orbs  and  bosses,  splin- 
ters of  light,  a  chaos  of  the  indescribable.  Presently  the  hubbub  ceased, 
deep  silence  reigned  again,  and  after  whispered  and  bewildered  confabu- 
lation from  door  to  door,  we  fell  again  to  dreamless  sleep. 

In  the  morning,  the  riot  of  the  night  was  our  only  subject.  The  terrace 
in  front  of  our  windows  showed  not  the  slightest  evidence  of  any  dis- 
turbance, and  we  almost  doubted  our  senses.  At  breakfast,  the  man  who 
served  us  knew  nothing;  he  had  not  wakened  all  night,  he  declared. 
Maarten  Maartens,more  and  more  intrigued,  insisted  on  asking  the  head- 
waiter.  The  answer  of  that  worthy  was,  "There  was  no  disturbance  at 
any  time  last  night.  If  there  had  been,  I  could  not  have  failed  to  hear  it." 
Maarten  Maartens  broke  from  this  sturdy  liar,  and  went  off'  to  the  bureau 
of  the  Hotel.  Here  he  found  the  manager,  with  whom  he  was  personally 
acquainted,  seated  at  his  desk;  two  or  three  other  people  were  near.  To 


EDMUND  GOSSE 

the  Dutch  novelist's  inquiry  the  manager  answered — "There  was  no 
noise  in  any  part  of  the  hotel  at  any  time  last  night.  You  were  dream- 
ing,— you  had  a  nightmare."  Maartcn  Maartens,  now  thoroughly  bat- 
fled,  almost  began  to  think  that  the  noise  must  have  been  a  delusion  of 
the  brain;  when  the  manager,  coming  to  him  along  a  passage,  and  glan- 
cing hither  and  thither  to  make  sure  no  one  was  listening,  said,  "The 
officers  of  a  crack  regiment  from  Cologne  were  supping  last  night  here, 
in  the  large  private  room  on  the  second  floor.  At  three  o'clock, as  they 
were  leaving,  they  threw  everything  that  was  on  the  table, — glass, 
china,  silver,  everything, — out  of  window  on  to  the  terrace  below.  But 
before  four  o'clock  my  waiters  had  removed  every  trace  of  what  the  of- 
ficers had  done.  I  tell  you  the  facts  because  you  are  so  persistent,  but  I 
must  beg  you  to  ask  no  more  questions  and  make  no  more  remarks.  If 
it  were  known  to  the  authorities  that  any  complaints  had  been  made,  my 
licence  would  be  withdrawn.  My  people  are  so  well  disciplined,  that  not 
a  single  man  or  woman  employed  in  the  hotel  would  admit  that  any  in- 
cident had  taken  place."  Maarten  Maartens  said,"  But  would  you  allow 
civilians  to  behave  like  that.''"  "Civilians!"  exclaimed  the  manager;  "in 
their  case  I  should  telephone  to  the  police  at  the  crash  of  the  first  wine- 
glass." 

Before  we  left  Konigswinter  that  day  we  went  with  Maarten  Maartens 
to  call  on  the  publislier  of  the  German  edition  of  his  writings,  which  had 
a  very  large  sale.  We  were  received  with  much  ceremony  in  a  modern 
house,  sum ptuou.sly  furnished,  and  set  in  an  enchanting  park  which  goes 
down  to  the  Rhine.  The  civility  of  the  great  publisher  and  of  his  family 
was  extreme.  In  the  course  of  conversation  Maarten  Maartens,  in  whom 
the  nocturnal  bombardment  of  his  bed-room  rankled,  told  the  story  with 
a  great  deal  of  humour  and  liveliness.  When  he  iiad  finished  there  was  a 
silence,  and  then  the  publisher  said,  very  sententiously,  "  We  never  criti- 
cise the  Army  !  Allow  me  to  show  you  that  part  of  the  garden  which  has 
been  finished  since  your  last  visit!" 

This,  then,  is  the  spirit  in  which  Germany  has  arrived  at  her  present 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

amazing  development.  It  renders  her  unique.  Can  any  one  conceive  a 
party  of  English  officers,  dining  at  the  Ritz,  and  hurling  all  their  plates 
and  dishes  into  the  street  below?  Can  any  one  conceive  a  party  of  French 
civilians, of  all  classes,  accepting  a  tyranny  of  arms  so  humiliating?  The 
arrogance  and  wantonness  of  a  military  aristocracy  balanced  by  an  un- 
questioning servility  of  the  great  bulk  of  the  nation.  A  Kultur  of  which 
the  watchword  is, "We  never  criticise  the  Army!"  An  army  in  which 
the  qualities  of  self-respect  and  respect  for  others  are  totally  ignored. 
An  amalgam  of  these  contrasted  elements  makes  up  the  atrocious  and 
formidable  temperament  of  our  enemy. 

Edmund  Gosse 


[   104  ] 


MAX  BEERBOHM 
A  GRACIOUS  ACT.  (CARICATURE) 

FROM   A   WATER-COLOUR  SKETCH 


; 


PAUL  HERVIEU 


SCIENCE  ET  CONSCIENCE 


La  caractéristique  de  ce  conflit  européen  sera  sans  doute,  aux  yeux  de 
nos  descendants,  qu'il  aura  été  l'instant  où  la  science  aura  failli  à  sa  mis- 
sion. La  science,  cet  attribut  des  dieux  dont  l'anoblissement  s'est  étendu 
aux  mortels  depuis  le  temps  de  Prométhée,  la  science, cette  conquête  pure, 
cette  bienfaitrice,  cette  aïeule  tutélaire,  oui  !  la  céleste  science,  nous  l'avons 
vue,  en  certaines  mains,  devenir  provisoirement  scélérate.  Elle  a  choyé 
l'incendie,  rendu  pratiques  les  milliers  d'assassinats  par  noyade. Elle  s'est 
faite  cmpoi.sonneuse  des  poumons,  vitrioleuse  des  visages.  Les  savants 
d'outre-Rhin  auront  passé  leurs  nuits  à  chercher  quel  nouvel  attentat  aux 
lois  divines  et  humaines,  quel  crime  inédit  pourraient  être  lancés  en  défi 
aux  nations,  par  le  mauvais  génie  de  leur  science  à  eux,  par  cette  science 
qui  a  réussi  à  rendre  la  guerre  plus  hideuse  encore  qu'elle  n'était  de 
naissance. 

Si  c'étaient  ces  innovations  impies  qui  dussent  ouvrir  les  chemins  que 
prendra  l'avenir, alors  une  guerre  future  s'emploierait  à  rendre  vénéneux 
les  épis  du  froment,  sophistiquerait  les  nuages  pour  que  leur  ondée  verse 
les  épidémies  dont  les  germes  sont  actuellement  découverts  ou  celles  que 
créerait  le  travail  des  laboratoires  allemands.  La  Kultur  drainerait  les 
laves  des  volcans  sous  les  villes, et  arrêterait  d'avance  les  étendues  d'écorce 
terrestre  à  projeter  dans  l'espace.  Et  ceux  des  diverses  planètes,  qui  sont 
à  lorgner  la  nôtre,  constateraient,  aux  siècles  prochains,  qu'une  monstru- 
euse science  aurait  fait  de  notre  Terre,  une  seconde  Lune,  sans  espèce 
vivante  ni  atmosphère,  autour  de  laquelle  des  satellites  soudain  mort-nés 
seraient  les  continents  exploses  de  l'Ancien-Monde,  ou  de  l'une  et  l'autre 
Amériques. 

Mais  non  !  Le  vieux  maître  écrivain  François  Rabelais  a  écrit  :  "  Science 
sans  conscience  e.st  la  ruine  de  l'âme."  La  science  sans  conscience  sera 
la  ruine  aussi  des  gens  qui  l'ont  choisie  jx)ur  base  de  leur  empire.  La 
science  démoniaque  verra  briser  ses  ailes  de  chauve-souris,  par  ce  pouvoir 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

invisible  et  impondérable  qui,  ange  gardien  des  hommes,  s'appelle  la  con- 
science. 

Depuis  que  la  civilisation  est  en  marche,  elle  va  lentement,  patiem- 
ment, irrésistiblement,  vers  le  mieux,  vers  le  bien.  Elle  a  constitué  l'in- 
épuisable réserve,  l'invincible  armée  des  valeurs  morales,  d'où  sortent  les 
affranchissements,  les  justices,  les  dignités  de  la  race  et  toute  loi  de  vérité. 
Cette  puissance  morale,  on  a  l'Histoire  pour  en  démontrer  la  constante 
victoire  contre  les  tyrannies  les  plus  solides,  contre  les  violences  les  mieux 
organisées.  Mais  je  n'en  veux  que  la  démonstration  suivante: 

L'État  qui  a  dit  que  la  force  prime  le  droit,  l'État  qui  a  piétiné  effroy- 
ablement toute  faiblesse  et  qui  n'a  d'égards  que  pour  ce  qui  est  fort,  d'où 
vient  que  cet  État  jugea  nécessaire  de  mentir  à  son  peuple,  et  à  la  face 
de  tous  les  peuples  sur  les  vraies  causes  de  la  guerre  et  sur  les  vrais 
auteurs  responsables.''  D'où  vient  que  cet  État  ne  manque  pas,  à  chaque 
occasion,  de  rééditer  le  mensonge  et  de  s'y  gargariser  vainement,  ridi- 
culement, follement.''  Il  a  marqué  ainsi  son  effroi  de  la  conscience  univer- 
selle. Celui  qui  ne  s'inquiétait,  il  y  a  un  an,  ni  du  ciel  ni  de  l'enfer,  avait 
pourtant  senti  tout  de  suite,  il  ne  cesse  de  sentir,  aujourd'hui,  l'action 
vengeresse  et  triomphale  s'élaborant  dans  toutes  les  consciences  de  l'hu- 
manité, ennemies,  neutres,  et  même  sujettes. 

Paul  Hervieu 

de  r Académie  Française 
31  Juillet  1915 


SCIENCE  AND  CONSCIENCE 

[  TRANSLATION  ] 

1t  will  be  left  to  our  descendants  to  realize  that  the  chief  significance  of 
this  European  conflict  lies  in  its  marking  the  moment  when  Science  failed 
in  her  mission.  Science,  our  heritage  from  the  gods,  whose  high  destiny 
has  been  fulfilling  itself  among  mortals  since  the  days  of  Prometheus: 
Science,  mankind's  purest  conquest,  the  benefactress,  the  tutelary  guar- 


PAUL  HERl'IEU 

dian — celestial  Science,  corrupted  by  strange  teachings,  has  turned  and 
rent  us.  She  has  let  loose  the  horror  of  fire  and  set  her  hand  to  the  mur- 
der of  thousands  by  drowning.  She  has  poisoned  the  air  that  men  breathe, 
and  flung  vitriol  in  their  faces.  Her  votaries  beyond  the  Rhine  have  passed 
the  watches  of  the  night  in  seeking  some  new  violation  of  laws  human 
and  divine — some  undreamt  outrage  to  be  launched  against  the  nations 
by  the  evil  genius  of  that  Science  of  theirs  which  has  made  War,  hideous 
as  it  was  at  birth,  more  loathsome  still. 

If  these  unholy  innovations  were  to  blaze  the  way  for  the  future,  we 
should  find  the  war-makers  of  to-morrow  causing  the  wheat-fields  to  bear 
a  poisoned  harvest  and  forcing  the  very  clouds  in  heaven  to  rain  down  pes- 
tilences w  hose  germs  are  known  to  us  now,  or  would  in  time  be  brought 
to  birth  in  the  alembics  of  German  laboratories.  Kultur  would  channel 
the  lava  of  volcanoes  under  great  cities,  and  hurl  into  space  vast  stretches 
of  the  earth's  crust.  The  planets  of  the  universe,  watching,  would  learn 
in  centuries  to  come  that  a  monstrous  Science  had  transformed  our  World 
into  another  Moon,  void  of  life  and  air,  around  which  swim  still-born 
satellites  that  were  once  the  blasted  continents  of  the  Old  World  or  the 
Americas. 

But  this  is  not  to  be.  The  old  master-writer,  François  Rabelais,  has  said  : 
"Science  without  conscience  spells  ruin  to  the  soul."  And  so  Science 
without  conscience  must  mean  the  destruction  of  that  nation  which  has 
chosen  it  as  the  foundation  of  empire.  Demoniacal  Science, dragon- winged, 
will  be  shattered  against  that  invisible  and  imponderable  force,  the  guard- 
ian angel  of  mankind,  which  is  called  Conscience. 

From  the  dawn  of  civilization  it  has  moved  slowly,  patiently,  irresist- 
ibly toward  the  better,  toward  the  good.  It  has  constituted  the  inexhaust- 
ible reserve,  the  invincible  army  of  moral  values,  out  of  which  the  lib- 
erties, the  justices,  the  dignities  of  the  race,  and  every  law  of  truth,  have 
come  to  being.  History  stands  ready  to  number  the  victories  of  this  moral 
force  over  the  most  strongly  organized  lawlessness  and  the  mightiest 
tyrannies.  And  I  ask  no  better  demonstration  than  this: 

c  107  : 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

The  State  which  has  declared  that  might  is  right, which  has  trampled 
under  foot  all  weakness  and  respects  only  that  which  is  strong — how 
comes  it  that  this  State  finds  itself  constrained  to  lie  to  its  own  people  and 
to  all  the  nations  about  the  true  causes  of  this  war  and  the  men  who  are 
responsible  for  it?  How  comes  it  that  this  State  never  fails,  whenever 
chance  offers,  to  repeat  the  dreary  lie  and  mouth  it  over  desperately,  ab- 
surdly, vainly  ?  Thus  does  it  betray  its  terror  of  the  universal  Conscience. 
The  power  which,  one  year  ago,  feared  neither  heaven  nor  hell,  felt 
instantly  and  must  ever  feel  the  avenging  and  triumphant  assault  of  all 
the  consciences  of  humanity — enemy,  neutral,  and  even  subject  to  itself. 

Paul  Hervieu 

de  r Académie  Française 
July  31,  1915 


[    108   -] 


J.  L.  GEROME 
TURKISH  SOLDIER 

FROM   THE  ORIGINAL  PENCIL  DRAWING   MADE  IN    1857 


"f 


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w 


/I,,'' 


/  /  \ 


GENERAL  HUMBERT 


LES  ARABES  AVAIENT  RAISON 

Le  28  août  1914,  après  une  sanglante  bataille,  la  l""  Division  du  Maroc 
avait  refoulé  l'ennemi  de  la  Fosse  à  l'Eau  dans  la  direction  de  Thin-le- 
Moutiers. 

La  nuit  venue,  malgré  des  pertes  cruelles,  la  satisfaction  était  grande: 
chacun  espérait  pour  le  lendemain  l'achèvement  de  la  victoire. 

Mais  contrairement  à  ces  prévisions,  l'ordre  arriva,  sur  le  coup  de  onze 
heures  du  soir,  de  se  dégager  au  plus  vite  et  de  marcher  en  retraite  vers 
les  plateaux  qui  dominent  à  l'Est  la  route  de  Mézières  à  Rethel. 

Ce  mouvement  était  une  conséquence  de  la  manœuvre  géniale  conçue 
des  le  25  août  par  le  Général  Joffre  et  qui  devait  aboutir,  comme  chacun 
sait,  a  la  victoire  de  la  Marne;  mais  nous  l'ignorions. 

Donc,  il  fallut  se " décrocher "  immédiatement.  La  nuit  était  très  noire; 
les  troupes  accablées  par  une  dure  journée  de  combat,  couchaient  sur  leurs 
positions. 

Néanmoins,  les  ordres  se  transmirent  rapidement  et,  à  minuit,  dans 
un  silence  complet,  la  Division  retraitait  en  plusieurs  colonnes  face  à 
l'Est. 

L'ennemi  allait-il  éventer  le  mouvement.''  Il  faillait  craindre  en  tout  cas 
qu'à  l'aube,  c'est  à  dire  après  3  heures  de  marche,  il  ne  s'en  aperçut  et  ne 
commençât  une  poursuite  qui  aurait  été  fort  gênante. 

Il  nous  aurait  en  effet  rattrapés  au  pied  du  plateau,  alors  que  la  Division 
était  obligée  de  se  former  en  une  colonne  de  route  unique  pour  y  accéder. 

Mais,  contrairement  à  nos  craintes  rien  ne  gêna  notre  opération  ;  à  midi, 
les  troupes  étaient  rassemblées  et  en  ordre  parfait  dans  les  environs  de 
Neuvizy,  à  l'Est  de  Launois. 

Que  s'était-il  passé.''  L'ennemi  était-il  resté  sur  place?  Avait-il  lui-même 
battu  en  retraite? 

C'est  dans  la  journée  seulement  que  l'explication  de  son  attitude  nous 
fut  connue. 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

Par  suite  de  l'obscurité  de  la  nuit  ou  pour  tout  autre  motif,  un  batail- 
lon de  Tirailleurs  Algériens,  celui  du  Commandant  Mignerot,  n'avait 
pas  été  touché  par  l'ordre  de  repliement. 

Il  était  en  toute  première  ligne  et  ne  possédait  d'autre  ordre  que  celui 
qu'il  avait  reçu  la  veille  en  fin  de  journée:  "Avant-postes  de  combat; 
résister  à  tout  prix." 

Aussi  à  l'aube,  lorsque  l'ennemi  se  rendant  compte  enfin  de  notre  dé- 
robade, voulut  pousser  de  l'avant,  il  trouva,  au  centre  de  notre  front,  tel 
qu'il  était  la  veille,  ce  bataillon  en  position,  ferme,  résolu  à  exécuter  son 
ordre  coûte  que  coûte. 

La  lutte,  au  dire  des  témoins,  fut  homérique;  accablé  par  des  forces  su- 
périeures, écrasé  par  l'artillerie,  le  bataillon  résista  sur  place  d'abord,  puis 
lorsqu'il  fut  enveloppé  sur  ses  ailes,  recula  pas  à  pas,  défendant  vigou- 
reusement chaque  pouce  de  terrain. 

C'est  cette  superbe  attitude  qui,  à  mon  insu,  assura  à  la  Division,  le 
temps  voulu  pour  exécuter  son  ascension  sur  le  plateau. 

Mais,  hélas,  ce  fut  au  prix  des  plus  douloureux  sacrifices;  ce  magni- 
fique bataillon  qui  comptait  plus  de  1,000  combattants  avait  perdu  le 
Commandant,  la  plupart  des  officiers  et  600  hommes. 

Au  cours  de  cette  glorieuse  résistance  se  produisit  l'incident  que  je  veux 
raconter. 

Lorsque  le  repli  commença,  il  ne  pouvait  être  question  de  relever  morts 
ou  blessés. — Grande  fut  la  stupéfaction  des  Arabes.  C'étaient  de  vieux 
soldats,  qui  avaient  combattu  un  peu  partout,  en  Algérie,  au  Maroc;  tou- 
jours ils  avaient  vu  leurs  chefs  veiller  soigneusement  à  ce  qu'aucun  blessé, 
aucun  cadavre  ne  risquât  d'être  massacré  ou  profané  par  l'ennemi — le 
Berbère  ou  le  Chleuh.  —  Voici  que  cette  fois,  on  abandonnait  les  blessés  et 
les  morts.  Ils  n'en  croyaient  pas  leurs  yeux.  Des  murmures  s'élevèrent 
dans  les  rangs;  un  vieux  sergent  alla  même  jusqu'à  menacer  de  son  fusil 
un  officier  en  l'appelant  traître. 

On  eut  toutes  les  peines  du  monde  à  leur  rappeler  ce  qu'on  leur  avait 
pourtant  dit:  dans  les  armées  de  l'Europe,  les  blessés,  les  morts,  lorsqu'ils 


GENERAL  HUMBERT 

tombent  aux  mains  de  l'ennemi  constituent  un  dépôt  sacré  ;  ils  sont  traités 
avec  humanité,  avec  respect. 

Hélas,  les  Arabes  avaient  raison.  Combien  de  fois  l'avons-nous  con- 
staté avec  indignation  et  colère! 

Mais,  au  début  de  la  guerre,  qui  de  nous  n'eût  pas  accordé  à  l'ennemi 
les  sentiments  qui  sont  l'honneur  d'une  armée:  la  générosité,  l'humanité, 
le  respect  des  conventions,  de  la  parole  donné? 

Qui  eut  imaginé  que  45  ans  de  "  Kultur  "  produiraient  de  si  tristes  ré- 
sultats .'' 

Heureusement,  nous  avons  trouvé  à  ces  désillusions  de  douces  conso- 
lations: 

Comme  tout  se  compense  dans  l'univers,  il  s'est  rencontré  des  âmes 
exquises  qui  se  sont  ingéniées  à  opposer  aux  misères  de  la  guerre,  les 
remèdes  les  plus  touchants. 

Telle  est  l'œuvre  des  Sans-Foyer. 

Pour  les  bienfaits  qu'elle  a  prodigués,  pour  les  nombreux  affligés  qu'elle 
a  secourus,  notre  reconnaissance  lui  est  acquise. 

Honneur  à  ses  Fondateurs. 

Général  Humbert 

Q.  G.  Ill'  Armée,  28  Août  1915 


AN  HEROIC  STAND 
[translation] 

On  the  28th  of  August,  1914,  after  a  hard-fought  battle,  the  First  Mo- 
roccan Division  drove  the  enemy  back  from  la  Fosse  à  l'Eau,  in  the  direc- 
tion of  Thin-le-Moutiers. 

Despite  our  many  losses  we  were  exultant  when  night  fell,  and  con- 
fident of  winning  a  decisive  victory  the  next  morning. 

But  at  eleven  o'clock,  contrary  to  our  expectations,  we  got  an  order 

C  111  ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

to  retreat  at  once  towards  the  east,  in  the  direction  of  the  heights  which 
command  the  road  from  Mézières  to  Rethel. 

This  movement  was  part  of  the  strategic  plan  made  by  General  JofFre 
on  the  25th  of  August,  a  plan  which  led,  as  every  one  now  knows,  to 
the  victory  of  the  Marne — but  of  that  we  knew  nothing  at  the  time. 

The  night  was  pitch  dark.  The  men, worn  out  by  the  long  day's  fight- 
ing, had  fallen  asleep  where  they  had  halted,  but  the  order  was  rapidly 
transmitted,  and  at  midnight,  in  dead  silence,  the  columns  of  our  Division 
set  their  faces  eastward. 

There  was  a  chance  that  the  enemy  might  discover  our  purpose.  We 
feared  that  in  three  hours  when  daylight  came,  we  should  be  pursued, 
and  if  we  were  overtaken  it  might  be  awkward,  for,  to  mount  to  the 
plateau  that  lay  ahead  of  us  the  Division  would  be  obliged  to  take  the 
narrow  road  in  single  column. 

Nothing,  however,  interfered  with  us;  we  carried  our  movement 
through  successfully, and  soon  the  troops  were  assembled  in  perfect  order 
to  the  east  of  Launois,  near  Neuvizy. 

We  could  not  understand  why  we  had  not  been  molested.  Had  the 
enemy  remained  where  we  left  him,  or  had  he  retreated.'' 

Later  in  the  day  we  learnt  the  reason  of  our  security.  Because  of  the  dark- 
ness, or  for  some  other  reason,  the  order  to  fall  back  was  not  transmitted 
to  a  battalion  of  the  Tirailleurs  Algériens,  led  by  Commandant  Mignerot. 

The  battalion  therefore  remained  where  it  was,  in  the  first  fighting 
line,  in  obedience  to  an  order  of  the  day  before,  which  had  been  to  hold 
its  ground  at  whatever  cost. 

Thus  at  dawn,  when  the  enemy  found  we  had  given  him  the  slip,  and 
tried  to  follow  us  up,  this  battalion,  bent  on  carrying  out  the  only  order 
it  had  received, was  there  to  face  him. 

Those  who  saw  the  battle  said  it  was  Homeric.  Overwhelmed  by  supe- 
rior numbers,  crushed  by  artillery,  the  battalion  at  first  fought  where  it 
stood,  and  then,  enveloped  on  both  wings,  fell  back  step  by  step,  fiercely 
contesting  every  inch  of  ground. 

C    "2    ] 


GENERAL  HUMBERT 

That  splendid  stand  gave  the  Division  time  to  climb  the  heights  in 
safety.  But  a  heavy  price  was  paid;  when  the  fight  began  the  battalion 
numbered  more  than  a  thousand;  when  it  was  over  the  Commandant, 
almost  all  his  officers  and  six  hundred  of  his  men  were  dead. 

It  was  in  the  course  of  this  glorious  resistance  that  the  following  in- 
cident took  place.  When  the  battalion  was  forced  back  it  was  imjX)ssible 
to  carry  off  the  dead  and  wounded.  The  Arabs  were  amazed.  They  were 
old  soldiers  who  had  fought  all  over  Morocco  and  Algeria,  and  they  had 
always  seen  their  leaders  take  the  utmost  care  that  no  wounded  com- 
rades, no  corpse  of  a  brave  man,  should  be  left  behind  to  be  massacred 
or  defiled  by  savage  tribesmen.  And  now  they  were  abandoning  their 
wounded  and  their  dead.  They  could  not  believe  their  eyes;  munnurs 
arose  from  the  ranks;  one  old  sergeant  went  so  far  as  to  menace  his 
officer  with  his  rifle  and  call  him  "traitor." 

Often  as  they  had  been  told  by  their  chiefs  of  the  respect  with  which 
the  dead  and  wounded  are  treated  by  European  armies,  it  was  almost 
impossible  to  reassure  them  as  to  the  fate  of  their  comrades. 

How  often  since,  alas,  with  bitter  wrath,  we  have  had  reason  to  recall 
their  instinctive  distrust  of  the  foe  ! 

But  in  those  early  days  of  the  war,  which  one  of  us  would  have  hesi- 
tated to  give  our  enemies  credit  for  the  feelings  which  are  part  of  an 
Army's  very  soul:  generosity,  humanity,  respect  for  the  word  of  honour .-^ 

Who  could  have  imagined  that  forty-five  years  of  "Kultur"  would 
have  borne  such  fruit.'' 

Fortunately  there  is  consolation  even  for  such  disillusionment.  This  is 
a  universe  of  compensations,  and  compassionate  souls  are  striving  to 
lessen  the  inevitable  misery  of  this  most  terrible  of  wars. 

Among  them  we  gladly  reckon  those  who  come  to  the  aid  of  the  Home- 
less. And  in  the  name  of  the  many  helpless  sufferers  whom  they  relieve 
we  offer  them  our  gratitude. 

General  Humbert 

Commanding  the  Third  Army  of  France 


JOHN  SINGER  SJRGENT,  R.A. 
PORTRAIT  OF  HENRY  JAMES 

FROM  A   PHOTOGRAPH  OF  THE  ORIGINAL  PAINTING 


H  EN  HT  JAMES 


THE  LONG  WARDS 

1  HERE  comes  back  to  me  out  of  the  distant  past  an  impression  of  the 
citizen  soldier  at  once  in  his  collective  grouping  and  in  his  impaired,  his 
more  or  less  war-worn  state,  which  was  to  serve  me  for  long  years  as 
the  most  intimate  vision  of  him  that  my  span  of  life  was  likely  to  dis- 
close. This  was  a  limited  affair  indeed,  I  recognise  as  I  try  to  recover  it, 
but  I  mention  it  because  I  was  to  find  at  the  end  of  time  that  I  had  kept 
it  in  reserve,  left  it  lurking  deep  down  in  my  sense  of  things,  however 
shyly  and  dimly,  however  confusedly  even,  as  a  term  of  comparison,  a 
glimpse  of  something  by  the  loss  of  which  I  should  have  been  the  poorer; 
such  a  residuary  possession  of  the  spirit,  in  fine,  as  only  needed  dark- 
ness to  close  round  it  a  little  from  without  in  order  to  give  forth  a  vague 
phosphorescent  light.  It  was  early,  it  must  have  been  very  early,  in  our 
Civil  War,  yet  not  so  early  but  that  a  large  number  of  those  who  had 
answered  President  Lincoln's  first  call  for  an  army  had  had  time  to  put 
in  their  short  period  (the  first  terin  was  so  short  then,  as  was  likewise 
the  first  number,)  and  reappear  again  in  camp,  one  of  those  of  their  small 
New  England  State,  under  what  seemed  to  me  at  the  hour,  that  of  a  splen- 
did autumn  afternoon,  the  thickest  mantle  of  heroic  history.  If  I  speak  of 
the  impression  as  confused  I  certainly  justify  that  mark  of  it  by  my  fail- 
ure to  be  clear  at  this  moment  as  to  how  much  they  were  in  general  the 
worse  for  wear — since  they  can't  have  been  exhibited  to  me,  through 
their  waterside  settlement  of  tents  and  improvised  shanties,  in  anything 
like  hospital  conditions.  However,  I  cherish  the  rich  ambiguity,  and  have 
always  cherished  it,  for  the  sake  alone  of  the  general  note  exhaled,  the 
thing  that  has  most  kept  rememl)rance  unbroken.  I  carried  away  from 
the  place  the  impression,  the  one  that  not  only  was  never  to  fade,  but 
was  to  show  itself  susceptible  of  extraordinary  eventual  enrichment.  I 
may  not  pretend  now  to  refer  it  to  the  more  particular  sources  it  drew 
ujx)n  at  that  summer's  end  of  1861,  or  to  say  why  my  repatriated  war- 

[    115   ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

riors  were,  if  not  somehow  definitely  stricken,  so  largely  either  lying  in 
apparent  helplessness  or  moving  about  in  confessed  languor:  it  suffices 
me  that  I  have  always  thought  of  them  as  expressing  themselves  at  al- 
most every  point  in  the  minor  key,  and  that  this  has  been  the  reason  of 
their  interest.  What  I  call  the  note  therefore  is  the  characteristic  the  most 
of  the  essence  and  the  most  inspiring — inspiring  I  mean  for  considera- 
tion of  the  admirable  sincerity  that  we  thus  catch  in  the  act:  the  note  of 
the  quite  abysmal  softness,  the  exemplary  genius  for  accommodation,  that 
forms  the  alternative  aspect,  the  passive  as  distinguished  from  the  active, 
of  the  fighting  man  whose  business  is  in  the  first  instance  formidably  to 
bristle.  This  aspect  has  been  produced,  I  of  course  recognise,  amid  the 
horrors  that  the  German  powers  had,  up  to  a  twelvemonth  ago,  been  for 
years  conspiring  to  let  loose  upon  the  world  by  such  appalling  engines 
and  agencies  as  mankind  had  never  before  dreamed  of;  but  just  that  is 
the  lively  interest  of  the  fact  unfolded  to  us  now  on  a  scale  beside  which, 
and  though  save  indeed  for  a  single  restriction,  the  whole  previous  illus- 
tration of  history  turns  pale.  Even  if  I  catch  but  in  a  generalising  blur 
that  exhibition  of  the  first  American  levies  as  a  measure  of  experience 
had  stamped  and  harrowed  them,  the  signally  attaching  mark  that  I  refer 
to  is  what  I  most  recall;  so  that  if  I  didn't  fear,  for  the  connection,  to  af>- 
pear  to  compare  the  slighter  things  with  the  so  much  greater,  the  dimin- 
ished shadow  with  the  far-spread  substance,  I  should  speak  of  my  small 
old  scrap  of  truth,  miserably  small  in  contrast  with  the  immense  evidence 
even  then  to  have  been  gathered,  but  in  respect  to  which  latter  occasion 
didn't  come  to  me,  as  having  contained  possibilities  of  development  that 
I  must  have  languished  well-nigh  during  a  lifetime  to  crown  it  with. 

One  had  during  the  long  interval  not  lacked  opportunity  for  a  vision 
of  the  soldier  at  peace,  moving  to  and  fro  with  a  professional  eye  on  the 
horizon,  but  not  fished  out  of  the  bloody  welter  and  laid  down  to  pant, 
as  we  actually  see  him  among  the  Allies,  almost  on  the  very  bank  and 
within  sound  and  sight  of  his  deepest  element.  The  effect  of  many  of  the 
elapsing  years,  the  time  in  England  and  France  and  Italy,  had  indeed 

C  lie: 


HENRr  JAMES 

been  to  work  his  collective  presence  so  closely  and  familiarly  into  any 
human  scene  pretending  to  a  full  illustration  of  our  most  generally  ap- 
proved conditions  that  I  confess  to  having  missed  him  rather  distressfully 
from  the  picture  of  things  offered  me  during  a  series  of  months  spent 
not  long  ago  in  a  few  American  cities  after  years  of  disconnection.  I  can 
scarce  say  why  I  missed  him  sadly  rather  than  gladly — I  might  so  easily 
have  prefigured  one's  delight  in  his  absence;  but  certain  it  is  that  my 
almost  outraged  consciousness  of  our  practically  doing  without  him  amid 
American  conditions  was  a  revelation  of  the  degree  in  which  his  great 
imaging,  his  great  reminding  and  enhancing  function  is  rooted  in  the 
European  basis.  I  felt  his  non-existence  on  the  American  positively  pro- 
duce a  void  which  nothing  else,  as  a  vivifying  substitute,  hurried  forward 
to  fill;  this  being  indeed  the  case  with  many  of  the  other  voids,  the  most 
aching, which  left  the  habituated  eye  to  cast  about  as  for  something  to 
nibble  in  a  state  of  dearth.  We  never  know,  I  think,  how  much  these 
wanting  elements  have  to  suggest  to  the  pampered  mind  till  we  feel  it 
living  in  view  of  the  community  from  which  they  have  been  simplified 
away.  On  these  occasions  they  conspire  with  the  effect  of  certain  other, 
certain  similar  expressions,  examples  of  social  life  proceeding  as  by  the 
serene,  the  possibly  too  serene,  process  of  mere  ignorance,  to  bring  to 
a  head  for  the  fond  observer  the  wonder  of  what  is  supposed  to  strike, 
for  the  projection  of  a  furnisiied  world,  the  note  that  they  are  not  there  to 
strike.  However,  as  I  quite  grant  the  hypothesis  of  an  observer  still  fond 
and  yet  remarking  the  lapse  of  the  purple  patch  of  militarism  but  with  a 
joy  unclouded,  I  limit  myself  to  the  merely  personal  point  that  the  fancy 
of  a  particular  brooding  analyst  cou/J  so  sharply  suffer  from  a  vague- 
ness of  privation,  something  like  an  unseasoned  observational  diet,  and 
then,  rather  to  his  relief,  find  the  mystery  cleared  up.  And  the  strict  rele- 
vancy of  the  bewilderment  I  glance  at,  moreover,  becomes  questionable, 
further,  by  reason  of  my  having,  with  the  outbreak  of  the  horrors  in 
which  we  are  actually  steeped,  caught  myself  staring  at  the  exhibited 
militarism  of  the  general  British  scene  not  much  less  ruefully  than  I  could 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

remember  to  have  stared,  a  little  before,  at  the  utter  American  deficit. 
Which  proves  after  all  that  the  rigour  of  the  case  had  begun  at  a  bound 
to  defy  the  largest  luxury  of  thought  ;  so  that  the  presence  of  the  mili- 
tary in  the  picture  on  the  mere  moderate  insular  scale  struck  one  as 
"furnishing"  a  menaced  order  but  in  a  pitiful  and  pathetic  degree. 

The  degree  was  to  alter,  however,  by  swift  shades,  just  as  one's  com- 
prehension of  the  change  grew  and  grew  with  it  ;  and  thus  it  was  that, 
to  cut  short  the  record  of  our  steps  and  stages,  we  have  left  immeasur- 
ably behind  us  here  the  question  of  what  might  or  what  should  have 
been.  That  belonged,  with  whatever  beguiled  or  amused  ways  of  looking 
at  it,  to  the  abyss  of  our  past  delusion,  a  collective  state  of  mind  in  which 
it  had  literally  been  possible  to  certain  sophists  to  argue  that,  so  far  from 
not  having  soldiers  enough,  we  had  more  than  we  were  likely  to  know 
any  respectable  public  call  for.  It  was  in  the  very  fewest  weeks  that  we 
replaced  a  pettifogging  consciousness  by  the  most  splendidly  liberal,  and, 
having  swept  through  all  the  first  phases  of  anxiety  and  suspense,  found 
no  small  part  of  our  measure  of  the  matter  settle  down  to  an  almost  lux- 
urious study  of  our  multiplied  defenders  after  the  fact,  as  I  may  call  it,  or 
in  the  light  of  that  acquaintance  with  them  as  products  supremely  tried 
and  tested  which  I  began  by  speaking  of.  We  were  up  to  our  necks  in 
this  relation  before  we  could  turn  round,  and  what  upwards  of  a  year's 
experience  of  it  has  done  in  the  contributive  and  enriching  way  may  now 
well  be  imagined.  I  might  feel  that  my  marked  generalisation,  the  main 
hospital  impression,  steeps  the  case  in  too  strong  or  too  stupid  a  synthesis, 
were  it  not  that  to  consult  my  memory,  a  recollection  of  countless  asso- 
ciative contacts,  is  to  see  the  emphasis  almost  absurdly  thrown  on  my 
quasi-paradox.  Just  so  it  is  of  singular  interest  for  the  witnessing  mind 
itself  to  feel  the  happy  truth  stoutly  resist  any  qualifying  hint — since  I 
am  so  struck  with  the  charm,  as  I  can  only  call  it,  of  the  tone  and  temper 
of  the  man  of  action,  the  creature  appointed  to  advance  and  explode  and 
destroy,  and  elaborately  instructed  as  to  how  to  do  these  things,  reduced 
to  helplessness  in  the  innumerable  instances  now  surrounding  us.  It 

C  118  -2 


HENR  r  JAMES 

does  n't  in  the  least  take  the  edge  from  my  impression  that  his  sweet 
reasonableness,  representing  the  opposite  end  of  his  wondrous  scale,  is 
probably  the  very  oldest  story  of  the  touching  kind  in  the  world;  so  far 
indeed  from  my  claiming  the  least  originality  for  the  appealing  appear- 
ance as  it  has  lately  reached  me  from  so  many  sides,  I  find  its  suggestion 
of  vast  communities,  communities  of  patience  and  placidity,  acceptance 
submission  pushed  to  the  last  point,  to  be  just  what  makes  the  whole 
show  most  illuminating. 

"Wonderful  that,  from  east  to  west,  they  must  all  be  like  this,"  one 
says  to  one's  self  in  presence  of  certain  consistencies,  certain  positive  mo- 
notonies of  aspect  ;  "  wonderful  that  if  joy  of  battle  (  for  the  classic  term, 
in  spite  of  new  horrors,  seems  clearly  still  to  keep  its  old  sense,)  has,  to 
so  attested  a  pitch,  animated  these  forms,  the  disconnection  of  spirit  should 
be  so  prompt  and  complete,  should  hand  the  creature  over  as  by  the  easiest 
turn  to  the  last  refinements  of  accommodation.  The  disconnection  of  the 
flesh,  of  i^hysical  function  in  whatever  ravaged  area,  that  may  well  be 
measureless;  but  how  interesting,  if  the  futility  of  such  praise  doesn't  too 
much  dishonour  the  subject,  the  exquisite  anomaly  of  the  intimate  read- 
justment of  the  really  more  inflamed  and  exasperated  part,  or  in  other 
words  of  the  imagination,  the  captured,  the  haunted  vision,  to  life  at  its 
most  innocent  and  most  ordered  !  "  To  that  point  one's  unvarying  thought 
of  the  matter;  which  yet,  though  but  a  meditation  without  a  conclusion, 
becomes  the  very  air  in  which  fond  attention  spends  itself.  So  far  as  com- 
merce of  the  acceptable,  the  tentatively  helpful  kind  goes,  one  looks  for 
the  key  to  success  then,  among  the  victims,  exactly  on  that  ground  of 
the  apprehension  pacified  and  almost,  so  to  call  it,  trivialised.  The  attach- 
ing thing  becomes  thus  one's  intercourse  with  the  imagination  of  the  par- 
ticular patient  subject,  the  individual  himself,  in  the  measure  in  which  this 
interest  bears  us  up  and  carries  us  along;  which  name  for  the  life  of  his 
spirit  has  to  cover, by  a  considerable  stretch,  all  the  ground.  By  the  stretch 
of  the  name,  moreover,  I  am  far  from  meaning  any  stretch  of  the  faculty 
itself — which  remains  for  the  most  part  a  considerably  contracted  or  inert 

C    119  ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

force,  a  force  in  fact  often  so  undeveloped  as  to  be  insusceptible  of  mea- 
surement at  all,  so  that  one  has  to  resort,  in  face  of  the  happy  fact  that 
communion  still  does  hold  good,  to  some  other  descriptive  sign  for  it. 
That  sign,  however,  fortunately  presents  itself  with  inordinate  prompti- 
tude and  fits  to  its  innocent  head  with  the  last  perfection  the  cap,  in  fact 
the  very  crown,  of  an  office  that  we  can  only  appraise  as  predetermined 
goodnature.  We  after  this  fashion  score  our  very  highest  on  behalf  of  a 
conclusion,  I  think,  in  feeling  that  whether  or  no  the  British  warrior's 
goodnature  has  much  range  of  fancy,  his  imagination,  whatever  there 
may  be  of  it,  is  at  least  so  goodnatured  as  to  show  absolutely  everything 
it  touches,  everything  without  exception,  even  the  worst  machinations  of 
the  enemy,  in  that  colour.  Variety  and  diversity  of  exhibition,  in  a  world 
virtually  divided  as  now  into  hospitals  and  the  preparation  of  subjects  for 
them,  are,  I  accordingly  conceive,  to  be  looked  for  quite  away  from  the 
question  of  physical  patience,  of  the  general  consent  to  suffering  and 
mutilation,  and,  instead  of  that,  in  this  connection  of  the  sort  of  mind  and 
thought,  the  sort  of  moral  attitude,  that  are  born  of  the  sufferer's  other 
relations;  which  I  like  to  think  of  as  being  different  from  country  to  coun- 
try, from  class  to  class,  and  as  having  their  fullest  national  and  circum- 
stantial play. 

It  would  be  of  the  essence  of  these  remarks,  could  I  give  them  within 
my  space  all  the  particular  applications  naturally  awaiting  them,  that  they 
pretend  to  refer  here  to  the  British  private  soldier  only — generalisation 
about  his  officers  would  take  us  so  considerably  further  and  so  much 
enlarge  our  view.  The  high  average  of  the  beauty  and  modesty  of  these, 
in  the  stricken  state,  causes  them  to  affect  me,  I  frankly  confess,  as  proba- 
bly the  very  flower  of  the  human  race.  One's  apprehension  of"  Tommy" 
— and  I  scarce  know  whether  more  to  dislike  the  liberty  this  mode  of 
reference  takes  with  him,  or  to  incline  to  retain  it  for  the  tenderness  really 
latent  in  it — is  in  itself  a  theme  for  fine  notation,  but  it  has  brought  me 
thus  only  to  the  door  of  the  boundless  hospital  ward  in  which,  these 
many  months,  I  have  seen  the  successive  and  the  so  strangely  quiet  tides 

[  120  :] 


HENRT  JAMES 

of  his  presence  ebb  and  flow,  and  it  stays  me  there  before  the  incalcu- 
lable vista.  The  perspective  stretches  away,  in  its  mild  order,  after  the 
fashion  of  a  tunnel  boring  into  the  very  character  of  the  people,  and  so 
going  on  forever — never  arriving  or  coming  out,  that  is,  at  anything  in 
the  nature  of  a  station,  a  junction  or  a  terminus.  So  it  draws  ofl"  through 
the  infinite  of  the  common  personal  life,  but  planted  and  bordered,  all 
along  its  passage,  with  the  thick-growing  flower  of  the  individual  illus- 
tration, this  sometimes  vivid  enough  and  sometimes  pathetically  pale. 
The  great  fact,  to  my  now  so  informed  vision,  is  that  it  undiscourageably 
continues  and  that  an  unceasing  repetition  of  its  testifying  particulars 
seems  never  either  to  exhaust  its  sense  or  to  satisfy  that  of  the  beholder. 
Its  sense  indeed,  if  I  may  so  far  simplify,  is  pretty  well  always  the  same, 
that  of  the  jolly  fatalism  above-mentioned,  a  state  of  moral  hospitality 
to  the  practices  of  fortune,  however  outrageous,  that  may  at  times  fairly 
be  felt  as  providing  amusement,  providing  a  new  and  thereby  a  refresh- 
ing turn  of  the  personal  situation,  for  the  most  interested  party.  It  is  true 
that  one  may  be  sometimes  moved  to  wonder  which  is  the  most  inter- 
ested party,  the  stricken  subject  in  his  numbered  bed  or  the  friendly,  the 
unsated  inquirer  who  has  tried  to  forearm  himself  against  such  a  measure 
of  the  "criticism  of  life  "as  might  well  be  expected  to  break  upon  him 
from  the  couch  in  question,  and  who  yet,  a  thousand  occasions  for  it  hav- 
ing been,  all  round  him,  inevitably  neglected,  finds  this  ingenious  provi- 
sion quite  left  on  his  hands.  He  may  well  ask  himself  what  he  is  to  do  with 
people  who  so  consistently  and  so  comfortably  content  themselves  with 
being — being  for  the  most  part  incuriously  and  instinctively  admirable 
—  that  nothing  whatever  is  left  of  them  for  reflection  as  distinguished 
from  their  own  practice;  but  the  only  answer  that  comes  is  the  repro- 
duction of  the  note.  He  may,  in  the  interest  of  appreciation,  try  the  ex- 
periment of  lending  them  some  scrap  of  a  complaint  or  a  cur.se  in  order 
that  they  shall  meet  him  on  congruous  ground,  the  ground  of  encourage- 
ment to  his  own  participating  impulse.  They  are  imaged,  under  that  pos- 
sibility, after  the  manner  of  those  unfortunates,  the  very  poor,  the  vie- 

C    121     ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

tims  of  a  fire  or  shipwreck,  to  whom  you  have  to  lend  something  to  wear 
before  they  can  come  to  thank  you  for  helping  them.  The  inmates  of  the 
long  wards,  however,  have  no  use  for  any  imputed  or  derivative  senti- 
ments or  reasons;  they  feel  in  their  own  way,  they  feel  a  great  deal,  they 
don't  at  all  conceal  from  you  that  to  have  seen  what  they  have  seen  is  to 
have  seen  things  horrible  and  monstrous — but  there  is  no  estimate  of 
them  for  which  they  seek  to  be  indebted  to  you,  and  nothing  they  less 
invite  from  you  than  to  show  them  that  such  visions  must  have  poisoned 
their  world. Their  world  is  n't  in  the  least  poisoned:  they  have  assimilated 
their  experience  by  a  process  scarce  at  all  to  be  distinguished  from  their 
having  healthily  got  rid  of  it. 

The  case  thus  becomes  for  you  that  they  consist  wholly  of  their  applied 
virtue,  which  is  accompanied  with  no  waste  of  consciousness  whatever. 
The  virtue  may  strike  you  as  having  been,  and  as  still  being,  greater  in 
some  examples  than  others,  but  it  has  throughout  the  same  sign  of  dif- 
fering at  almost  no  point  from  a  supreme  amiability.  How  can  creatures 
so  amiable,  you  allow  yourself  vaguely  to  wonder,  have  welcomed  even 
for  five  minutes  the  stress  of  carnage.^  and  how  can  the  stress  of  carnage, 
the  murderous  impulse  at  the  highest  pitch,  have  left  so  little  distortion 
of  the  moral  nature.?  It  has  left  none  at  all  that  one  has  at  the  end  of 
many  months  been  able  to  discover;  so  that  perhaps  the  most  steadying 
and  refreshing  effect  of  intercourse  with  these  hospital  friends  is  through 
the  almost  complete  rest  from  the  facing  of  generalisations  to  which  it 
treats  you.  One  would  even  like  perhaps,  as  a  stimulus  to  talk,  more  gen- 
eralisation ;  but  one  gets  enough  of  that  out  in  the  world,  and  one  does  n't 
get  there  nearly  so  much  of  what  one  gets  in  this  perspective,  the 
particular  perfect  sufficiency  of  the  extraordinary  principle,  whatever  it 
is,  which  makes  the  practical  answer  so  supersede  any  question  or  any 
argument  that  it  seems  fairly  to  have  acted  by  chronic  instinctive  antici- 
pation, the  habit  of  freely  throwing  the  personal  weight  into  any  obvious 
opening.  The  personal  weight,  in  its  various  forms  and  degrees,  is  what 
lies  there  with  a  head  on  the  pillow  and  whatever  wise  bandages  there- 

[    122    '2 


HENRT  JAMES 

about  or  elsewhere,  and  it  becomes  interesting  in  itself,  and  just  in  pro- 
portion, I  think,  to  its  having  had  all  its  history  after  the  fact.  All  its 
history  is  that  of  the  particular  application  which  has  brought  it  to  the 
pass  at  which  you  find  it,  and  is  a  stream  roundabout  which  you  have  to 
press  a  little  hard  to  make  it  flow  clear.  Then,  in  many  a  case,  it  does 
flow,  certainly,  as  clear  as  one  could  wish,  and  with  the  strain  that  it  is 
always  somehow  English  history  and  illustrates  afresh  the  English  way 
of  doing  things  and  regarding  them,  of  feeling  and  naming  them.  The 
sketch  extracted  is  apt  to  be  least  coloured  when  the  prostrate  historian, 
as  I  may  call  him,  is  an  Englishman  of  the  English;  it  has  more  point, 
though  not  perhaps  more  essential  tone,  when  he  is  a  Scot  of  the  Scots, 
and  has  most  when  he  is  an  Irishman  of  the  Irish;  but  there  is  absolutely 
no  difference,  in  the  light  of  race  and  save  as  by  inevitable  variation  from 
individual  to  individual,  about  the  really  constant  and  precious  matter, 
the  attested  possession  on  the  part  of  the  contributor  of  a  free  loose  un- 
disciplined quantity  of  being  to  contribute. 

This  is  the  palpable  and  ponderable,  the  admirably  appreciable,  re- 
siduum—  as  to  which  if  I  be  asked  just  how  it  is  that  I  pluck  the  flower 
of  amiability  from  the  bramble  of  an  individualism  so  bristling  with  ac- 
cents, I  am  afraid  I  can  only  say  that  the  accents  would  seem  by  the 
mercy  of  chance  to  fall  together  in  the  very  sense  that  permits  us  to  de- 
tach the  rose  with  the  fewest  scratches.  The  rose  of  active  goodnature, 
irreducible,  incurable,  or  in  other  words  all  irreflective,  that  is  the  vari- 
ety which  the  individualistic  tradition  happens,  up  and  down  these  islands, 
to  wear  upon  its  ample  breast — even  it  may  be  with  a  considerable  effect 
of  monotony.  There  it  is,  for  what  it  is,  and  the  very  simplest  summary 
of  one's  poor  bedside  practice  is  perhaps  to  confess  that  one  has  most  of 
all  kept  one's  nose  buried  in  it.  There  hangs  about  the  poor  practitioner 
by  that  fact,  I  profess,  an  aroma  not  doubtless  at  all  mixed  or  in  the  least 
my.stical,  but  so  unpervertedly  wholesome  that  what  can  I  pronounce  it 
with  any  sort  of  conscience  but  sweet .''  That  is  the  rough,  unless  I  rather 
say  the  smooth, report  of  it;  which  covers  of  course,  I  hasten  to  add,  a 

C    123    ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

constant  shift  of  impression  within  the  happy  limits.  Did  I  not,  by  way 
of  introduction  to  these  awaiters  of  articulate  acknowledgment,  find  my- 
self first  of  all,  early  in  the  autumn,  in  presence  of  the  first  aligned  rows 
of  lacerated  Belgians? — the  eloquence  of  whose  mere  mute  expression 
of  their  state,  and  thereby  of  their  cause,  remains  to  me  a  vision  unforget- 
table forever,  and  this  even  though  I  may  not  here  stretch  my  scale  to 
make  them,  Flemings  of  Flanders  though  they  were,  fit  into  my  remarks 
with  the  English  of  the  English  and  the  Scotch  of  the  Scotch.  If  other 
witnesses  might  indeed  here  fit  in  they  would  decidedly  come  nearest, 
for  there  were  aspects  under  which  one  might  almost  have  taken  them 
simply  for  Britons  comparatively  starved  of  sport  and,  to  make  up  for 
that,  on  straighter  and  homelier  terms  with  their  other  senses  and  appe- 
tites. But  their  effect,  thanks  to  their  being  so  seated  in  everything  that 
their  ripe  and  rounded  temperament  had  done  for  them,  was  to  make 
their  English  entertainers,  and  their  successors  in  the  long  wards  espe- 
cially, seem  ever  so  much  more  complicated  —  besides  making  of  what 
had  happened  to  themselves,  for  that  matter,  an  enormity  of  outrage 
beyond  all  thought  and  all  pity.  Their  fate  had  cut  into  their  spirit  to  a 
peculiar  degree  through  their  flesh,  as  if  they  had  had  an  unusual  thick- 
ness of  this,  so  to  speak  —  which  up  to  that  time  had  protected  while  it 
now  but  the  more  exposed  and,  collectively,  entrapped  them;  so  that 
the  ravaged  and  plundered  domesticity  that  one  felt  in  them,  which 
was  mainly  what  they  had  to  oppose,  made  the  terms  of  their  exile  and 
their  suffering  an  extension  of  the  possible  and  the  dreadful.  But  all  that 
vision  is  a  chapter  by  itself — the  essence  of  which  is  perhaps  that  it  has 
been  the  privilege  of  this  placid  and  sturdy  people  to  show  the  world 
a  new  shade  and  measure  of  the  tragic  and  the  horrific.  The  first  wash 
of  the  great  Flemish  tide  ebbed  at  any  rate  from  the  hospitals — creating 
moreover  the  vast  needs  that  were  to  be  so  unprecedentedly  met,  and 
the  native  procession  which  has  prompted  these  remarks  set  steadily  in. 
I  have  played  too  uncertain  a  light,  I  am  well  aware,  not  arresting  it  at 
half  the  possible  points,  yet  with  one  aspect  of  the  case  staring  out  so 

[    124    ] 


HENRT  JAMES 

straight  as  to  form  the  vivid  moral  that  asks  to  be  drawn.  The  deepest 
impression  from  the  sore  human  stuff  with  which  such  observation  deals 
is  that  of  its  being  strong  and  sound  in  an  extraordinary  degree  for  the 
conditions  producing  it.  These  conditions  represent,  one  feels  at  the  best, 
the  crude  and  the  waste,  the  ignored  and  neglected  state  ;  and  under  the 
sense  of  the  small  care  and  scant  provision  that  have  attended  such  hearty 
and  happy  growths,  struggling  into  life  and  air  with  no  furtherance  to 
speak  of,  the  question  comes  pressingly  home  of  what  a  better  economy 
might,  or  verily  mightn't,  result  in.  If  this  abundance  all  slighted  and 
unencouraged  can  still  comfort  us,  what  would  n't  it  do  for  us  tended  and 
fostered  and  cultivated.''  That  is  my  moral,  for  I  believe  in  Culture — 
speaking  strictly  now  of  the  honest  and  of  our  own  congruous  kind. 

Henry  James 


:  12.5  : 


LEON  BAKST 
MÉNADE 

FROM   A   WATER-COLOUR  SKETCH 


MAURICE  MAETERLINCK 


NOTRP:  HERITAGE 


oi  l'on  pouvait  suivre  des  yeux  ce  qui  se  passe  dans  le  monde  idéal  qui 
nous  domine  de  toutes  parts,  on  constaterait  sans  nul  doute  que  rien  ne 
se  perd  sur  les  champs  de  bataille.  Ce  que  nos  admirables  morts  aban- 
donnent, c'est  à  nous  qu'ils  le  lèguent;  et  quand  ils  périssent  ix)ur  nous, 
ce  n'est  pas  métaphoriquement  et  d'une  manière  détournée,  mais  très  ré- 
ellement et  d'une  façon  directe  qu'ils  nous  laissent  leur  vie.  Tout  homme 
qui  succombe  dans  un  acte  de  gloire  émet  une  vertu  qui  redescend  sur 
nous,  et  dans  la  violence  d'une  fin  prématurée,  rien  ne  s'égare  et  rien  ne 
s'évapore.  Il  donne  en  grand  et  d'un  seul  coup  ce  qu'il  eût  donné  dans 
une  longue  existence  de  devoir  et  d'amour.  La  mort  n'entame  pas  la  vie; 
elle  ne  peut  rien  contre  elle.  Le  total  de  celle-ci  demeure  toujours  pareil. 
Ce  qu'elle  enlève  à  ceux  qui  tombent  passe  en  ceux  qui  restent  debout. 
La  mort  ne  gagne  rien  tant  qu'il  y  a  des  vivants.  Plus  elle  exerce  ses 
ravages,  plus  elle  augmente  l'intensité  de  ce  qu'elle  n'atteint  {wint;  plus 
elle  poursuit  ses  victoires  illusoires,  mieux  elle  nous  prouve  que  l'hu- 
manité finira  par  la  vaincre. 

Maurice  Maeterlinck 


OUR  INHERITANCE 

[translation] 

1 F  our  vision  could  open  on  that  unseen  world  wjiich  dominates  us  from 
all  sides,  we  should  unquestionably  learn  that  on  the  battlefields  there  can 
be  no  loss.  The  heritage  which  our  splendid  soldiers  yield  up  in  dying 
is  bequeathed  to  us;  and  when  they  perish  for  our  sakes,  they  give  us 
their  lives  in  no  metaphoric,  roundabout  sense,  but  really  and  directly. 
From  every  man  who  meets  death  gloriously  there  goes  forth  a  virtue 

:  127  ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

which  enters  into  us,  and  even  in  the  violence  of  an  untimely  end  nothing 
goes  astray  or  vanishes.  In  one  short  moment  the  soldier  gives  open- 
handed  the  offering  of  an  entire  lifetime  of  love  and  duty.  Death  is  power- 
less to  prevail  over  Life.  Its  total  remains  forever  unchanged.  That  which 
is  taken  from  the  fallen  passes  on  to  those  left  standing.  While  men  still 
hve,  Death  can  win  nothing.  The  more  desperate  its  efforts,  the  brighter 
burns  the  fîame  it  would  fain  extinguish;  the  more  cruelly  it  pursues  its 
phantom  victories,  the  clearer  is  it  proven  that  in  the  end  Humanity  must 
surely  vanquish. 

Maurice  Maeterlinck 


Translated  by  J.  G.  D.  Paul 

C    128    ^ 


EDWARD  SANDFORD  MARTIN 


WE  WHO   SIT  AFAR  OFF 

1,  SKEPTIC  though  I  am,  am,  hke  every  Englishman,  a  mystic.  I  see  in 
this  war  almost  literally  a  fight  between  God  and  the  Devil.  .  .  .  With 
all  mv  soul  I  believe  that  the  ideal  of  pity  is  the  noblest  thing  we  have, 
and  that  its  denial  which  waves  on  every  German  flag  is  the  denial  of 
all  that  the  greatest  men  have  striven  for  for  centuries.  ...  I  feel  that 
the  two  enormous  spirits  that  move  this  world  are  showing  their  weapons 
almost  visibly,  and  that  never  was  the  garment  of  the  living  world  so 
thin  over  the  gods  that  it  conceals. 

"I  am  not  much  elated  by  the  thought.  I  have  little  opinion  of  Provi- 
dence as  an  ally,  and  I  am  surprised  at  the  weakness  the  Kaiser  shows 
for  his  pocket  deity.  What  we  have  to  do,  in  my  opinion,  we  do  our- 
selves, and  our  task  is  none  the  lighter  that  we  defend  the  right.  But  I 
am  hardened  and  set  by  the  thing  I  believe.  We  feel  that  we  are  fighting 
for  the  life  of  England — yes,  for  the  safety  of  France — yes,  for  the  sanc- 
tity of  treaties — yes,  but  behind  these  secondary  and  comparatively  mate- 
rial issues,  for  something  far  deeper,  far  greater,  for  something  so  great 
and  deep  that  if  our  efforts  fail  I  pray  God  I  may  die  before  I  see  it." 

These  are  words  from  a  letter  of  an  English  physician  with  the  Brit- 
ish expeditionary  force  to  an  American  physician  who  had  sent  him  Dr. 
Eliot's  war-book.  He,  in  the  war,  disclosing  how  he  feels  about  it,  has 
described  also  how  it  seems  to  thousands  of  us  who  are  looking  on.  We 
too  are  mystics  in  our  feelings  about  this  war.  We  too  have,  and  have 
had  almost  from  the  first,  this  profound  sense  of  a  fundamental  conflict 
between  the  powers  of  good  and  evil,  the  soul  of  the  world  at  grips  with 
its  body. 

And  while  we  feel  so  profoundly  tiiat  the  Allies  are  on  the  Lord's  side, 
a  good  many  of  us  at  least  prefer  the  English  doctor's  small  reliance 
on  Providence  as  an  ally  to  the  Kaiser's  proprietary  confidence  in  the 
Almighty's  backing.  It  is  not  safe  to  count  on  Providence  to  win  for  us. 

[    129   ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

He  knows  us  much  better  than  we  know  ourselves,  and  may  have  views 
for  our  improvement  and  the  world's  which  our  minds  do  not  fathom 
and  which  do  not  match  our  plans.  Nevertheless,  in  a  vast  crisis  to  feel 
one's  self  on  the  Lord's  side,  there  to  fight,  win  or  lose,  there  to  stay,  aUve 
or  dead,  is  an  enormous  stay  to  the  spirit.  "  I  am  hardened  and  set,"  says 
the  Enghsh  doctor, "by  the  thing  I  believe."  Then  truly  is  Providence 
his  ally. 

To  work  is  to  pray  ;  to  fight  is  to  pray  ;  to  tend  the  wounded  in  hospi- 
tals and  avert  disease  is  to  pray.  The  people  in  action  are  quickened  and 
sustained  in  their  faith  by  their  exertions,  but  what  of  us  who  sit  afar  off 
in  safety  and  look  on  at  Armageddon.'' 

Our  case  is  pretty  trying.  When  the  war  first  came  it  was  hard  for 
the  thousands  of  us  who  cared,  to  sleep  in  our  beds.  We  felt  it  was  our 
war,  too,  and  it  was,  for  we  too  are  Europeans,  and  have  besides  as  great 
a  stake  in  civilization  as  any  one  has.  We  have  kept  up  our  habit  of  sleep- 
ing in  our  beds  because  that  was  more  convenient  and  there  was  no  ad- 
vantage to  any  one  in  our  doing  otherwise.  And  we  have  gone  on  without 
much  outward  change  in  our  work  and  our  habits  of  life.  And  we  have 
grown  a  little  callous,  and  doubtless  a  little  torpid,  and  lost  some  of  the 
ardor  that  came  with  the  first  shock.  Nevertheless,  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  Americans  have  had  one  continuing,  underlying  thought  for  a  year  and 
a  quarter — the  war,  the  great  conflict  between  good  and  evil,  and  what 
to  do  about  it. 

There  never  has  been  a  moment's  doubt  about  which  side  would  be 
ours  if  we  went  in.  But  how  get  in  ?  Where  lies  duty  ?  By  what  course 
may  we  best  help.''  Is  it  our  war.''  When  and  how  will  the  mandate  come 
to  us,  too,  to  resist  the  crushing  of  civilization  under  the  Prussian  jack- 
boot.'' There  are  millions  of  Americans  who  want  to  get  into  the  war, 
but  there  are  more  millions  who  want  to  keep  out.  Our  English  doctor 
appreciates  the  predicament  of  neutral  countries,  and  this  is  what  he 
says  about  it: 

"War  being  what  it  is,  it  is  hopeless  to  expect  that  any  nation  will 

[  130  ;] 


EDWARD  SAN DFORD  MARTIN 

engage  in  it  who  does  not  fear  great  loss  or  hope  great  gain.  Nations 
will  always  be  swayed  by  the  influences  which  are  now  swaying  Italy, 
Greece,  Bulgaria  and  Rumania.  No  desire  of  justice  would  lead  those 
countries  to  join  us.  I  doubt  if  it  would  justify  their  rulers  in  declar- 
ing war." 

Perhaps  that  is  another  way  of  saying  that  no  country  will  get  into 
the  war  that  dares  to  stay  out.  Nations,  especially  democratic  nations,  are 
not  much  like  men.  They  may  not  say,  "  I  will  fight  for  you  ;  I  will  spend 
my  strength  and  treasure  for  you;  I  will  die  for  you  and  your  cause." 
Individuals  may  feel,  say,  do  all  that,  but  individuals  are  not  nations.  A 
nation  says:  "The  laws  of  my  being  must  determine  my  conduct.  I  must 
go  my  own  gait  according  to  those  rules.  But  if  war  stretches  across  my 
path  I  need  not  turn  out  for  it." 

How  far  this  war  has  still  to  go,  no  one  knows.  It  may  still,  any  day, 
stretch  across  the  path  of  the  United  States,  so  that  the  natural  drive  of 
our  procedure  will  carry  us  into  it. 

Edward  Sandford  Martin 


:  131  ] 


JOHN  SINGER  SARGENT,  RA. 
TWO  HEADS 

FROM  A  PENCIL  DRAWING 


/ 

// 

,/ 


K^ 


< 

^ 


^ 


;V 


V     I 


PAUL  ELMER  MORE 


A  MOMENT  OF  TRAGIC  PURGATION 

Let  me  say  forthwith  that  this  is  a  book  which  I  shall  read  with  deep 
interest,  but  to  which  I  contribute  reluctantly.  There  is  gloom  enough 
in  the  air,  and  I  see  no  profit  in  adding  the  scruples  and  doubts  of 
my  troubled  mind  to  the  general  sum.  For  I  can  find  little  reason  for 
hope  in  the  evils  that  have  fallen  upon  the  world  ;  and  where  are  the 
signs  of  the  wisdom  that  is  to  be  born  of  these  calamitous  times.''  When 
all  is  over  and  in  the  hush  of  desolation  we  have  leisure  to  reckon  up  the 
cost  of  our  madness,  will  it  appear  that  we  have  learned  the  meaning  of 
the  sentimental  shirking  of  realities  .''Or  shall  wecontinue,as  we  have  done 
for  a  century  and  more,  to  place  sympathy  above  justice,  and  to  forget 
the  responsibility  of  the  individual  in  our  insistence  on  the  obligations  of 
society  ;  inflaming  the  passions  of  men  by  rebellious  outcries  against  the 
unequal  dealings  of  Fate,  relaxing  the  immediate  bonds  of  duty  by  vague 
dreams  of  the  brotherhood  of  man,  weakening  character  by  reluctance  to 
pursue  crime  with  punishment,  preparing  the  way  for  outbursts  of  hatred 
by  fostering  the  emotions  at  the  expense  of  reason;  and  then,  in  alarm 
at  our  effeminacy,  rushing  to  the  opposite  glorification  of  sheer  force  and 
efficiency.''  One  naturally  hesitates  to  add  this  note  of  discouragement  to 
a  book  in  which  others  of  clearer  vision  will  no  doubt  record  the  signs  of 
returning  balance  and  sanity  among  men. 

Meanwhile,  I  have  found,  if  not  hope,  at  least  moments  of  tragic  pur- 
gation in  another  sort  of  reading.  By  chance  I  have  been  going  through 
some  of  the  plays  of  Euripides  this  summer,  particularly  those  that  deal 
with  the  disasters  of  Troy  and  Troy's  besiegers,  and  the  pathos  of  these 
scenes  has  blended  strangely  with  the  news  that  reaches  me  once  a  day 
from  the  city.  Inevitably  the  iinagination  turns  to  comparisons  between 
the  present  and  the  remote  past.  So,  for  instance, the  very  day  that  brought 
me  the  request  to  contribute  to  the  Belgian  relief  I  was  reading  the  story 

C    i'i.3   '] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

of  Iphigenia,  sacrificed  in  order  that  the  Greek  army  might  sail  from 
Aulis  and  reach  its  destination: 

0  father!  Were  the  tongue  of  Orpheus  mine, 
To  charm  the  stones  with  song  to  follow  me, 
And  throw  the  spell  of  words  on  whom  I  would, 
So  should  I  speak.  But  now,  as  I  am  wise 

In  tears,  and  only  tears,  I  speak  through  these. 

This  body  which  my  mother  bore  to  thee, 

Low  at  thy  knees  I  lay,  imploring  thus 

To  spare  my  unripe  youth.  Sweet  is  the  light 

To  human  eyes  ;  oh  !  force  me  not  to  see 

Those  dark  things  under  earth  !  I  first  of  all 

Called  thee  by  name  of  "father";  heard  "my  child"; 

1  first  here  on  thy  knees  gave  and  received 
The  little,  dear,  caressing  joys  of  love. 

And  I  recall  thy  words:  "O  girl,"  thou  saidst, 
"Shall  ever  I  behold  thee  in  thy  home 
Happy  and  prosperous  as  becomes  thy  sire.-*" 
And  my  words  too,  while  then  my  tiny  hand 
Clung  to  thy  beard,  as  now  I  cling:  "And  I, 
Some  day  when  thou  art  old,  within  my  halls, 
Dearer  for  this,  shall  I  receive  thee,  father; 
And  with  such  love  repay  thy  fostering  care.''" 
These  words  still  in  my  memory  lodge;  but  thou 
Must  have  forgotten,  willing  now  my  death. 
By  Pelops  and  thy  father  Atreus,  oh. 
And  by  my  mother,  who  a  second  time 
Must  travail  for  my  life,  oh,  hear  my  prayer! 
Why  should  the  wrongs  of  Helen  fall  on  me. 
Or  why  came  Paris  for  my  evil  fate.'' 
Yet  turn  thine  eyes  upon  me,  look  and  kiss, 


PAUL  ELMER  MORE 

That  dying  I  at  least  may  have  of  thee 
This  pledge  of  memory,  if  my  prayer  is  vain. 
O  brother,  little  and  of  little  aid, 
Yet  add  thy  tears  to  mine,  and  with  them  plead 
To  save  thy  sister.  For  in  children  still 
Some  sense  of  coming  evil  moves  the  heart. 
See,  father,  how  he  pleads  who  cannot  speak  ; 
Thou  wilt  have  mercy  and  regard  my  youth. 

From  this  passage,  which  furnished  Landor  with  the  theme  of  one  of 
the  most  beautiful,  in  some  respects  the  most  classical,  of  modern  poems, 
it  is  natural  to  turn  to  the  still  more  exquisite  account  of  the  death  of 
Polyxena,  the  youngest  daughter  of  Hecuba,  slain  as  a  peace-offering 
to  the  shade  of  Achilles.  The  brave  words  and  self-surrender  of  the  girl 
are  related  to  the  stricken  mother  by  the  herald  Talthybius: 

"  O  Argives,  ye  have  brought  my  city  low, 
And  I  will  die;  yet,  for  I  bare  my  throat, 
Myself  unflinching,  touch  me  not  at  all. 
As  ye  would  please  your  gods,  let  me  die  free 
Who  have  lived  free;  and  slay  me  as  ye  will. 
For  I  am  queenly  born,  and  would  not  go 
As  a  slave  goes  to  be  among  the  dead." 
Then  all  the  people  shouted,  and  the  king 
Called  to  the  youths  to  set  the  maiden  free  ; 
And  at  the  sheer  command  the  young  men  heard. 
And  drew  their  hands  away,  and  touched  her  not. 
And  she  too  heard  the  cry  and  the  command; 
Then  straightway  grasped  her  mantle  at  the  knot, 
And  rent  it  downwards  to  the  middle  waist, 
So  standing  like  a  statue,  with  her  breast 
And  besom  bared,  most  beautiful,  a  moment; 
Then  kneeling  spoke  her  last  heroic  words: 

[    135   ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

"This  is  my  breast,  O  youth,  if  here  the  blow 
Must  fall;  or  if  thou  choose  my  neck, 
Strike;  it  is  ready." 

And  Achilles'  son, 
Willing  and  willing  not,  for  very  ruth. 
Cleft  with  his  iron  blade  the  slender  throat, 
And  let  the  life  out  there.  And  this  is  true. 
That  even  in  death  she  kept  her  maiden  shame. 
And  falling  drew  her  robe  against  men's  eyes. 

These  pathetic  scenes,  we  should  remember,  were  enacted  before  the 
people  of  Athens  at  a  time  when  the  lust  of  empire  and  the  greed  of  ex- 
panding commerce  had  thrown  Greece  into  a  war  which  was  to  leave 
the  land  distracted  and  impoverished  of  its  men,  to  be  a  prey  to  the  am- 
bitions of  Alexander  and  the  armies  of  Rome.  What  deep  and  poignant 
emotions  Euripides  stirred  in  the  breasts  of  the  spectators  those  can  guess 
who  have  seen  his  Iphigeriia  and  Trojan  JVomen  acted  in  English  in  these 
similar  days  of  trial.  And  the  catharsis,  or  tragic  purgation,  was  the  same 
then  as  now,  only  more  perfect,  no  doubt,  and  purer.  By  these  echoes  of 
cruel  deeds,  ancient  even  in  the  years  of  the  Peloponnesian  war, the  mind 
is  turned  from  immediate  calamities  and  apprehensions  to  reflecting  on 
the  fatality  of  sin  and  madness  that  rests  on  mankind,  not  now  alone  but 
at  all  times.  With  the  tears  shed  for  strange,  far-off  things,  some  part  of 
the  bitterness  of  our  personal  grief  is  carried  away  ;  the  constriction  of 
resentment,  as  if  somehow  Fate  were  our  special  enemy,  is  loosened, 
and  the  hatred  of  cruel  men  that  clutches  the  heart  is  relaxed  in  pity  for 
the  everlasting  tragedy  of  human  life.  Instead  of  rebellion  we  learn  resig- 
nation. When  at  last  Iphigenia  surrenders  herself  to  be  a  victim  for  the 
host,  the  chorus  commend  her  act  and  draw  this  moral: 

Noble  and  well,  it  is  with  thee,  O  child; 
The  will  of  fortune  and  the  god  is  sick. 


PAUL  ELMER  MORE 

In  later  times  Lucretius  was  to  take  up  this  thought,  and  in  repeating 
the  story  of  Iphigenia  was  to  denounce  the  very  notion  of  divine  inter- 
ference in  perhaps  the  most  terrible  line  that  ever  poet  wrote: 

Tantum  religio  potuit  suadere  malorum. 

That  is  one  way  of  regarding  the  evils  of  human  destiny,  as  if  they  were 
the  work  of  blind  chance,  but  not  the  wise  way;  for  at  the  end  of  such 
atheism  only  madness  lies.  The  truer  counsel  is  in  that  humility  which 
faces  the  facts,  yet  acknowledges  the  impotence  of  man's  reason  to  act 
as  judge  in  these  high  matters.  Christianity  and  paganism  come  close 
together  in  the  lesson  taught  by  Euripides: 

O  daughter,  God  is  strange  and  all  his  ways 
Past  finding  out.  So  for  his  own  good  will 
He  turns  the  fortunes  of  mankind  about, 
And  hither  thither  moves. 

That  is  the  element  of  religious  purgation  which  Euripides  brought  to 
the  people  of  Athens  when  their  whole  horizon  was  darkened  by  war. 
But  this  is  not  all.  Indeed,  were  this  all,  we  should  reject  such  consola- 
tion indignantly,  as  being  akin  to  that  form  of  humanitarianism  which  has 
been  disintegrating  modern  society  by  throwing  the  res{X)nsibility  for 
crime  anywhere  except  on  the  individual  delinquent.  Euripides  may  have 
found  alleviation  in  the  universal  mystery  of  evil,  but  neither  he,  in  his 
better  moments,  nor  any  other  of  the  true  Greeks  turned  consolation  into 
license,  or  doubted  that  a  sure  nemesis  followed  the  infractions  of  justice, 
or  the  insolence  of  pride,  or  the  errors  of  guilty  ignorance: 

Strong  are  the  gods,  and  stronger  yet  the  law 
That  sways  them  ;  even  as  by  the  law  we  know 
The  gods  exist,  and  in  our  life  divide 
The  bounds  of  right  and  wrong. 

The  madness  of  Troy  and  the  Achaean  army  may  have  been  the  work 
of  heaven,  but  no  small  part  of  Greek  tragedy,  from  the  Agamemnon  of 

C    1-37   ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

Aeschylus  to  the  Hecuba  of  Euripides,  is  taken  up  with  the  tale  of  retri- 
bution that  came  to  this  man  and  that  for  his  arrogance  or  folly.  So  are 
consolation  and  admonition  bound  together.  If  their  union  in  ancient  eth- 
ics seems  paradoxical,  or  even  contradictory,  it  is  nevertheless  confirmed 
by  the  teaching  of  Christianity:  For  evil  must  come  into  the  world,  but 
woe  unto  him  through  whom  it  comes. 

It  is  a  curious  and  disquieting  fact  that  the  poet  who  was  able  to  com- 
press the  moral  of  Greek  tragedy  into  a  single  memorable  stanza,  belongs 
to  the  people  who,  if  there  is  any  truth  in  that  moral,  must  shortly  reckon 
with  the  nemesis  appointed  for  sins  of  presumption  and  cruelty. 

Ihr  zieht  ins  Leben  uns  hinein  ; 
Ihr  lasst  den  armen  schuldig  werden; 
Dann  iiberlasst  ihr  ihn  der  Pein  ; 
Denn  allé  Schuld  racht  sich  auf  Erden. 

Paul  Elmer  More 


C  138  ] 


JÂCQUES-EMILE  BLANCHE 
PORTRAIT  OF  GEORGE  MOORE 

FROM   A   PHOTOGRAPH  OF  THE  ORIGINAL   PAINTING 


AGNES  REPP  LIER 


THE  RUSSIAN  BOGYMAN 


The  devastating  war  in  Europe  has  robbed  the  United  States  of  one 
familiar  figure,  of  one  cherished  iUusion.  In  the  stage  setting  of  the  nations, 
we  have  long  expected  Russia  to  play  the  villain's  rôle.  We  have  de- 
pended on  her  for  dark  deeds,  we  have  owed  to  her  our  finest  thrills  of 
virtuous  indignation.  From  the  days  when  Mr.  George  Kennan  worked 
the  prolific  Siberian  prison  vein  (our  own  prison  system  was  not  then 
calculated  to  make  us  unduly  proud),  down  to  the  summer  of  1914,  we 
have  never  failed  to  respond  to  any  outcry  against  a  nation  about  which 
we  were  reliably  misinformed.lt  was  quite  the  fashion,  when  I  was  young, 
for  some  thousands,  or  perhaps  some  millions  of  modest  American  citi- 
zens to  sign  a  protest  to  the  Czar,  whenever  we  disapproved  of  the  im- 
perial policy.  What  became  of  these  protests, nobody  knew;  the  chance 
of  the  Czar's  reading  the  millions  of  names  seemed,  even  to  us,  unlikely; 
but  it  was  our  nearest  approach  to  intimacy  with  the  great  and  wicked 
ones  of  earth,  and  we  felt  we  were  doing  our  best  to  stem  the  tide  of 
tyranny. 

A  great  deal  of  this  popular  sentiment  came  to  us  from  England,  where 
hostiHty  to  Russia  was  bred  of  national  fear.  A  great  deal  of  it  was 
fostered  by  Jewish  immigrants  in  the  United  States.  But  the  dislike  of 
democracy  for  autocracy  was  responsible  for  our  most  cherished  illu- 
sions. 

Some  god  this  severance  rules. 

A  well-told  story  like  Mr.  Kipling's  "The  Man  Who  Was"  seemed  to 
us  an  indictment  of  a  nation.  Popular  magazines  cultivated  a  school  of 
fiction  in  which  Russian  nobles  were  portrayed  as  living  the  unfettered 
lives,  and  enjoying  the  unfettered  pastimes,  of  Dahomey  chiefs.  Popular 
melodrama  showed  us  the  heads  of  the  Russian  police  department  de- 
voting themselves  unreservedly  to  the  persecution  of  innocent  maiden- 

C   ï'39  ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

hood.  The  only  good  Russian  ever  presented  to  us  was  the  nihilist,  some 
one  who,  like  Mademoiselle  Ixe,  spent  her  time  in  pursuit  of  a  nameless 
official,  and  shot  him  for  a  nameless  crime.  Even  our  admiration  for  Count 
Tolstoy  was  founded  on  his  revolt  from  the  established  order  of  things 
in  his  own  country.  It  seldom  occurred  to  us  that  the  established  order 
of  things  in  any  other  country  would  have  been  equally  obnoxious  to  this 
thorough-paced  reformer.  New  York  would  have  been  as  little  to  his 
taste  as  was  St.  Petersburg. 

The  exigencies  of  a  political  alliance  have  impelled  England  to  lay  aside 
her  former  animosities,  and  bury  them  in  oblivion.  For  many  months  she 
has  tried  hard  to  reinstate  Russia  in  popular  opinion,  chiefly  by  means 
of  serious  papers  in  serious  periodicals,  which  the  populace  never  reads. 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  is  perhaps  the  only  in  an  left  in  the  United  Kingdom 
who  clings  desperately  to  the  good  old  Russian  bogy  man,  as  we  cling  to 
the  ogre  of  our  infancy,  and  the  pirate  of  our  tender  youth.  Mr.  Shaw's 
Russia  is  not  merely  a  land  where  pure-minded,  noble-hearted  disturbers 
of  the  peace  are  subject  to  shameful  captivity.  It  is  a  land  where  "people 
whose  worst  crime  is  to  find  the  Daily  News  a  congenial  newspaper  are 
hanged,  flogged,  or  sent  to  Siberia,  as  a  matter  of  daily  routine.  "  This  is 
worse  than  Dahomey,  where  the  perils  of  the  press  are  happily  unknown. 
Most  of  us  would  change  our  morning  paper  rather  than  be  hanged. 
Few  of  us  would  find  any  journal  "  congenial,"  which  paved  the  long  way 
to  Siberia. 

England  sympathized  with  Japan  in  the  Japanese-Russian  war  from 
interested  motives.  We  did  the  same  out  of  pure  unadulterated  sentiment. 
Japan  was  an  unfriendly  power,  given  to  hostile  mutterings.  Russia  was 
a  friendly  power,  which  had  done  us  more  than  one  good  turn.  But  Japan 
was  little,  and  Russia  was  big.  "  How,"  asks  the  experienced  Mr.  Vin- 
cent Crummies, "are  you  to  get  up  the  sympathies  of  an  audience  in  a 
legitimate  manner,  if  there  isn't  a  little  man  contending  against  a  big 
one.^"  Japan,  moreover,  was  the  innocent  land  of  cherry  blossoms,  and 
Russia  was  the  land  of  knouts,  and  spies,  and  Cossacks.  Russia  wor- 

l  140  ;] 


AGNES  REPPLIER 

shipped  God  with  rites  and  ceremonies,  displeasing  to  pious  Americans. 
Japan  belonged  to  Heathendom,  and  merited  enlightened  tolerance. 

A  fresh  deal  in  international  policy  may  at  any  time  sever  and  re-unite 
the  troubled  powers  of  Europe.  Their  boundary  lines  are  hostages  to  for- 
tune. But  we,  with  two  oceans  sweeping  our  shores,  have  lost  our  bogy- 
man  beyond  all  hope  of  recovery.  It  is  not  with  us  a  question  of  altered 
interests,  but  of  altered  values.  Germany's  campaign  in  Belgium  has 
changed  forever  our  standards  of  perfidy  and  of  frightfulness.  We  can 
never  go  back  to  the  old  ones.  Once  we  spoke  of  Russia  as  a  nation 

Which  to  the  good  old  maxim  clings. 
That  treaties  are  the  pawns  of  Kings. 

Now  we  know  that  Germany  outstrips  her  far  in  faithlessness.  Once  we 
called  Russia  oppressive,  cruel,  unjust.  Now  the  devastated  homes  of 
Flanders  teach  us  the  meaning  of  those  words.  Once  we  reproached 
Russia  for  being  the  least  civilized  of  Christian  nations.  Now  we  have  seen 
a  potent  civilization  crash  down  into  pure  savagery,  its  flimsy  restraints 
of  no  avail  before  the  loosened  passions  of  men. 

And  for  our  own  share  of  injury  and  insult.''  Is  it  possible  that  a  few 
years  ago  we  deeply  resented  Russia's  disrespect  for  American  passports; 
that  we  abrogated  a  treaty  because  she  dared  to  turn  back  from  her 
frontiers  American  citizens  armed  with  these  sacred  guarantees? To-day 
our  dead  lie  under  the  ocean  ;  and  Germany,  who  sent  them  there,  sings 
comic  songs  in  her  music  halls  to  celebrate  the  rare  jest  of  their  drowning. 
Our  sensitive  pride  which  could  brook  no  slight  from  the  friendly  hand  of 
Russia,  is  now  humbled  to  the  dust  by  Germany's  mailed  fist.  She  has 
spared  us  no  hurt,  and  she  has  spared  us  no  jibe.  Bleeding  and  bewildered, 
we  have  come  to  a  realization  of  things  as  they  are,  we  have  seen  the 
naked  truth,  and  we  can  never  go  back  to  our  illusions.  We  enjoyed  our 
old  bogyman,  our  shivers  of  horror,  our  exalted  sentiments,  our  comfort- 
able conviction  of  superiority.  Now  nothing  is  left  but  sorrow  for  our  dead, 
and  shame  for  the  wrongs  which  have  been  done  us.  As  long  as  history 

C  141  ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

is  taught,  the  tale  of  this  terrible  year  will  silence  all  other  tales  of  horror. 

Not  for  us  only,  but  for  the  listening  world,  the  standard  of  uttermost 

evil  has  been  forever  changed. 

Agnes  Repplier 


C  142  ;] 


EDIVIN  HOïrLAND  BLASHFIELD 
A  WOMAN'S  HEAD 

FROM  THE  ORIGINAL  DRAWING 


n 


^ 


^^ 


^         'TMv/l-'i.^.- 


ANDRÉ  SU ARES 

CHANT  DES  GALLOISES 
I 

Voici  que  le  soir  tombe, avec  l'orage.  Et  le  soleil  passionne  descend, 
comme  un  blessé  se  traîne  avec  lenteur  sur  la  colline:  il  descend  sur  la 
mer,  avec  un  sourire,  tout  en  sang.  Et  tout  à  l'heure,  le  divin  Héros  sera 
couché  sur  le  lit  qu'il  préfère. 

Voici  que  le  soir  tombe.  Les  jeunes  filles  de  l'Ouest  viennent  sur  la 
prairie;  et  viennent  aussi  les  jeunes  femmes  de  la  douce  terre.  Elles 
sont  deux  chœurs  qui  se  rencontrent  dans  l'herbe  fleurie  et  l'odeur  du 
blé  noir,  qui  sont  le  miel  et  la  vanille. 

Elles  s'avancent  les  unes  vers  les  autres,  les  vierges  et  celles  qui  le 
furent,  les  nids  à  baisers  et  celles  qui  voudraient  l'avoir  été.  Elles  dési- 
reraient de  danser:  mais  ni  les  amants,  ni  les  fiancés  ne  sont  plus  là.  Est-ce 
qu'ils  sont  tous  morts.?  Ils  sont  tous  partis  pour  l'œuvre  dure  et  pour  la 
guerre.  Elles  ne  pourront  plus  fouler  le  raisin  de  la  joie  dans  la  danse. 
Et  elles  ne  veulent  pas  danser  aux  bras  l'une  de  l'autre.  Il  ne  leur  reste 
qu'à  lancer  leur  âme  dans  le  chant. 

Chantez,  les  belles!  L'heure  du  chant  sonne  pour  vous,  sur  la  prairie 
brûlante,  entre  le  mur  des  chênes  et  les  lèvres  de  l'océan.  Allez,  mes 
belles!  Mettez-vous,  les  libres  jeunes  filles,  au  bord  de  la  vague  verte. 
Et  vous,  les  jeunes  femmes,  contre  la  haie  des  feuilles  au  cœur  déchi- 
queté, qui  vous  sépare  de  l'Orient. 


II 

LA  JEUNE  FILLE 

Amour!  un  an  de  guerre  !  et  les  treize  mois  sont  révolus!  O  fiancées  que 
nous  sommes  !  Douloureuses,  pleines  de  sourires,  avides  de  danser  et  tant 
déçues,  où  êtes-vous,  nos  fiancés .î* 

Notre  voix  est  toute  chaude.  Notre  voix  vient  du  feu,  jxjur  vous  ap- 

c  143  :] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

peler.  Beaux  fiancés,  où  êtes-vous,  si  doux,  si  chers  à  celles  qui  vous 
attendent  ? 

Nous  ne  danserons  plus.  Nous  chanterons  notre  peine. 

Une  sœur,  hier,  a  frappé  dans  la  nuit,  toc  toc,  sur  nos  portes,  à  la 
chambre  des  vierges. 

Et  vierge  comme  nous,  elle  est  entrée  tout  en  pleurs  et  nous  a  dit:  "Je 
suis  Poleska,  la  jeune  fille  de  Pologne.  Sœurs  de  Bretagne,  sœurs  gal- 
loises, savez-vous  la  danse  et  le  chant,  cet  été,  de  vos  sœurs  polonaises? 
Elles  sont  la  couronne  et  le  tombeau.  Elles  vont,  coquelicots  de  deuil  et 
bleuets,  par  la  plaine  ;  et  la  bêche  à  la  main,  du  matin  au  soir,  elles  creu- 
sent des  fosses.  Elles  mettent  dans  la  terre  leurs  fiancés  et  leurs  amants. 
Voilà  l'été  de  la  Pologne,  et  nos  couches  nuptiales,  6  sœurs  de  l'Occident." 

Ayant  dit  son  message,  elle  a  pâli,  la  brune  jeune  fille  de  l'Orient,  aux 
yeux  si  bleus,  au  visage  si  blanc;  et  baissant  son  col  souple  sur  sa  gorge, 
elle  est  morte  en  pleurant. 

Et  vous,  qui  êtes  contre  la  haie,  après  ce  long  hiver  dans  la  brume,  ô 
tendres  veuves  du  baiser,  quel  fut  votre  printemps.^  et  quel  est  votre  été.»* 
Vers  nous  levez  les  yeux,  belles  émeraudes  mouillées.  Répondez,  blondes 
orphelines  du  soleil,  chères  sœurs  galloises. 


III 

LA  JEUNE   FEMME 

Nous  sommes  les  amantes  et  les  jeunes  femmes.  Petites  sœurs,  vous 
n'êtes  que  les  fiancées. 

Un  an  de  dévorante  amour  et  de  regret  !  Une  année  dans  le  gouffre 
de  l'ombre  sèche!  Un  an  de  solitude  et  de  douleur. 

O  petites  sœurs,  vous  espérez  la  vie,  même  quand  vous  la  pleurez. 
Mais  nous,  elle  nous  dévore. 

Nous  voici  prêtes  à  mourir  d'amour.  Et  vainement.  Et  nul  ne  veut 
notre  don.  Et  notre  cœur  est  inutile.  Ah!  C'est  bien  là  le  pis.  Nous  mou- 
rons de  nous-mêmes  et  de  tout. 

C    144   ] 


ANDRE  S  V ARES 

Au  plus  tendre  de  nous,  le  désespoir  ronge  ce  que  le  souvenir  déchire. 
Fiancées,  fiancées,  vous  ne  savez  pas  les  ardeurs  des  amantes,  et  que 
leurs  larmes  sont  du  sang. 

Vous  ne  savez  pas  non  plus,  tu  l'ignores  encore,  toi  qui  chantes,  suave 
jeune  fille,  quelle  moisson  nous  avons  faite,  et  quel  est  ce  cortège,  là-bas, 
ouvrant  la  haie,  qui  s'avance  sur  la  prairie,  portant  un  trésor  caché, comme 
une  châsse  dans  les  blés. 

O  ma  sœur,  toi  qui  es  si  chaude  et  la  plus  pâle,  viens  dans  mes  bras, 
si  tu  ne  veux  tomber. 

Celui  que  ces  jeunes  femmes  promènent  sur  leurs  épaules,  parmi  les 
fleurs,  c'est  ton  beau  fiancé. 

Il  est  mort  d'amour  pour  Notre  Dame,  entre  la  mer  et  la  Marne. 

Il  aimait. 


IV 

Comme  le  soleil  rougit,  d'une  dernière  effusion,  toute  la  mer  verte,  on 
couche  le  beau  jeune  homme  dans  les  seigles. 

Il  est  mort.  Il  est  nu,  il  est  blanc  dans  les  épis.  Blanche  est  sa  bouche, 
et  ses  yeux  sont  clos  comme  les  portes  du  jour:  silence  éternel  sur  le  rire, 
la  lumière  et  le  bruit. 

Ses  lèvres  sont  de  cendres.  La  double  flamme  est  morte.  Plus  de  tison. 
Et  la  fleur  virile  est  à  jamais  fauchée.  Qu'il  est  beau,  le  jeune  corps  de 
l'homme!  Et  le  héros  est  toujours  pur. 

Elles  le  baisent  toutes,  cent  fois, suavement, comme  on  mange  le  raisin  à 
la  grappe;  et  les  unes  pleurent;  les  autres  sourient, telles  de  tendres  folles. 

C'est  moi,  l'amant!  C'est  moi  le  fiancé,  que  vous  portez  ainsi,  mes 
belles.  C'est  moi,  le  soc  de  la  terre  et  le  coutre  d'amour  que  vous  allez 
ensevelir  dans  l'herbe. 

Et  celle  qui  eût  été  mon  champ,  mourra  sans  fleurs  et  sans  épis. 

Du  moins,  sauvez-moi  de  la  mort  froide  et  de  l'oubli. 

[    145   H 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

Prenez  moi  dans  votre  paradis  de  femmes,  entre  vos  lèvres. 

Une  heure  encore,  tenez  moi  et  me  serrez  dans  votre  doux  giron  qui 
sent  la  menthe  fraîche,  le  miel,  le  romarin  et  la  brûlante  giroflée. 

Gardez  moi,  je  vous  prie,  dans  la  chambre  des  baisers.  Je  me  suis  séparé 
de  mes  autres  armes:  immortelles,  elles  n'ont  pas  besoin  de  moi. 

Et  puisqu'il  faut  un  linceul,  cousez  moi  dans  vos  cheveux  avec  vos 
larmes.  Cousez  moi,  à  longues  aiguillées  de  pleurs,  dans  vos  ardents  che- 
veux. 


Si  nous  ne  sommes  amour,  que  sommes  nous?  Toutes,  ici,  nous  voici 
vouées,  adieu  semailles  !  au  soleil  qui  s'en  va  chaque  soir  et  aux  cruelles 
pluies. 

Amants,  nos  bien  aimés,  tel  est  donc  l'amour  pour  qui  nous  sommes 
nées.''  Mères,  pourquoi  fîtes-vous  ces  filles  malheureuses.''  Nos  âmes  bon- 
dissent en  révolte.  Et  tous  nos  cœurs  qui  veulent  sortir  de  nous  ! 

Baisons  nous,  sœurs  chéries,  au  nom  de  l'amour  et  de  la  mort:  et  du 
Seigneur  qui  aime,  qui  ouvre  au  ciel  les  sources,  et  les  parcs  d'amour, 
pour  tous  les  Aimés,  au  paradis. 

—  O  belles,  ô  douloureuses,  chantent  les  jeunes  filles,  vous  qui  êtes 
séparées  de  votre  chair  et  de  vos  baisers,  venez. 

—  Et  vous,  petites  filles,  disent  les  jeunes  femmes,  ô  délicieuses,  divi- 
sées de  vos  désirs,  privées  de  votre  attente  et  des  caresses,  venez. 

—  Chers  cœurs  ! 

—  Chères  femmes  ! 

Elles  pleurent,  et  se  baisent  doucement  aux  lèvres,  avec  un  sourire. 
Puis  elles  se  sont  saluées,  en  chantant,  sous  le  portique  de  la  nuit,  tan- 
dis que  l'océan  dévorait  les  derniers  tisons  et  les  œillets  suprêmes  du 
couchant. 

André  Suarès 
C   146  ] 


ANDRÉ  S  V ARES 


SONG  OF  THE  WELSH  WOMEN 

[translation] 

Here  comes  the  night,  with  the  storm.  Slowly  the  passionate  sun  goes 
down;  like  a  wounded  man  he  drags  himself  over  the  hill;  swimming  in 
blood  he  sinks  toward  the  sea.  Soon  the  divine  Hero  will  be  laid  on  the 
bed  of  his  choice. 

Here  comes  the  night.  The  maidens  of  the  West  come  out  across  the 
meadows,  and  the  young  women  of  the  land  come  out  to  meet  them. 
Two  singing  choirs,  they  mingle  in  the  flowered  grass,  and  in  the  smell 
of  the  black  wheat  that  is  like  the  smell  of  honey  and  vanilla. 

Forward  they  go  to  meet  each  other,  maids  and  they  that  once  were 
maids — nests  of  kisses,  and  those  that  willingly  would  be  so.  They  long 
to  dance,  but  lovers  and  bridegrooms  are  far  away:  all  have  gone  out 
to  the  stern  work  of  war.  No  more  can  the  women  tread  the  red  wine  of 
joy  in  the  dance  ;  they  have  no  mind  to  dance  with  one  another,  and  so 
they  sing  instead. 

Begin,  fair  women  !  The  hour  of  your  song  has  come,  in  the  hot  mead- 
ows between  the  dark  wall  of  oaks  and  the  pale  lips  of  ocean.  Come! 
Take  your  places,  you  free-limbed  maidens,  by  the  green  wave,  and  you, 
young  women,  by  the  hedge-rows  with  fretted  leaves  that  stand  between 
you  and  the  east. 


II 

THE  YOUNG   GIRL  SPEAKS 

Love!  —  and  a  year  of  war!  The  twelvemonth  has  fulfilled  itself,  and  one 
month  more!  Sorrowful  and  full  of  smiles,  eager  to  dance  and  pale  with 
waiting  —  tell  us,  our  lovers,  where  you  linger! 

Our  voices  are  warm,  our  voices  come  from  the  fire  to  call  you.  Where 
are  you,  our  lovers,  you  that  are  so  dear  to  those  who  wait.? 

C  14.7  ] 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

We  have  forsworn  the  dance,  and  grief  shall  be  the  burden  of  our  song. 

Yesterday,  in  the  night,  a  sister  came  knock-knocking  at  our  door, 
the  door  of  the  virgins.  A  maid  as  we  are  maids,  she  came  in  to  us,  all 
weeping,  and  said: 

"I  am  the  daughter  of  Poland.  Sisters  of  Britain,  sisters  of  Wales,  do 
you  know  the  dance  that  your  Polish  sisters  dance,  and  the  songs  they 
sing.?  The  grave  and  the  funeral  garland  are  their  song.  Like  black  pop- 
pies and  dark  corn-flowers  sprinkled  on  the  plain,  they  move  in  sad  lines, 
from  night  to  morning  digging  graves  ;  and  in  those  graves  they  lay  their 
bridegrooms  and  their  lovers.  This,  my  sisters,  has  the  summer  brought 
to  Poland,  and  these  have  been  our  bridal  beds." 

And  having  spoken,  the  daughter  of  the  East  grew  pale,  and  drooped 
her  dark  head  upon  her  neck  and  died. 

And  you  who  stand  beside  the  hedge-rows,  what  was  your  spring-time, 
what  your  heavy  summer.''  Turn  toward  us  the  wet  emeralds  of  your 
eyes  :  answer,  golden  daughters  of  the  sun — our  sisters  of  Wales  ! 


Ill 

THE  YOUNG  WOMAN   SPEAKS 

We  are  the  young  women  and  the  beloved.  Little  sisters,  what  are  you 
but  the  betrothed .'' 

A  year  of  devouring  love,  a  year  of  longing  ;  long  year  in  the  valley 
of  parched  shadow — year  of  loneliness  and  grief! 

See,  we  are  dying  of  love,  and  none  to  slake  us.  Worst  waste  of  all, 
our  hearts  are  useless  ;  we  are  dying  of  ourselves  and  of  all  life.  O  young 
girls,  little  do  you  know  of  the  hearts  of  women  beloved,  and  lovers' 
tears  like  blood  ! 

Little  do  you  know  of  the  harvest  we  have  reaped,  or  of  the  mean- 
ing of  that  funeral  train  that  comes  across  the  meadows,  parting  the 
hedges  to  right  and  left  and  bearing  a  hidden  treasure  like  a  monstrance 
born  across  the  wheat. 

[    148   ] 


ANDRÉ  SU ARES 

O  my  sister,  burning  hot  and  palest,  come  to  me  lest  you  fall,  and  let 
me  hold  you. 

He  whom  the  young  women  carry  on  their  shoulders,  knee-deep  in 
flowers,  was  your  once  lover. 

Between  the  sea  and  the  Marne  he  died  for  love  of  our  Lady,  the 
Blessed  Virgin.  He  loved  .  .  . 


IV 

As  the  last  flush  of  sunset  suffuses  the  green  ocean  the  young  man  is 
laid  amid  the  wheat. 

He  is  dead.  White  and  naked  he  lies  among  the  wheat-ears.  White 
are  his  lips,  and  his  eyes  are  closed  like  the  eyes  of  the  day.  His  laughter, 
the  light  and  sound  of  him,  are  gone. 

His  mouth  is  ashes.  The  double  flame  of  his  lips  is  dead.  In  its  flower 
his  manhood  is  cut  down.  How  beautiful  is  the  young  man's  body!  And 
stainless  is  the  body  of  the  hero. 

The  women  bend  to  kiss  him  one  by  one, slowly, lingeringly, as  grapes 
are  eaten  from  the  vine;  and  some  weep,  and  others  laugh,  beside  them- 
selves for  grieving. 

I  am  the  lover,  whom  you  thus  bear  upon  your  shoulders;  young  maid- 
ens, I  am  the  betrothed.  I  am  the  ploughshare  in  the  wheatfield,  whom 
thus  you  lay  down  for  burial.  And  she  who  should  have  been  my  field 
and  my  harvest  shall  die  without  flower  and  without  ripening. 

Save  me  at  least,  O  pitying  women,  from  the  cold  earth  and  from  ob- 
livion. Keep  me  warm  in  the  paradise  of  your  lips,  an  hour  longer  keep 
me  among  you,  in  the  sweet  air  that  smells  of  honey  and  rosemary,  of 
clove-pinks  and  the  flowering  mint. 

Build  about  me  the  wami  chamber  of  your  kisses.  My  sword  and  my 
siiield  are  gone  from  me;  deathless,  they  have  no  need  of  the  dead. 

And  for  my  shrouding,  women,  wind  me  about  with  your  long  hair, 

C    149  J 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

and  sew  my  shroud  with  your  tears.  With  the  long  needles  of  your  tears 
sew  me  fast  into  your  burning  hair. 


If  we  are  not  Love  and  the  food  of  Love,  what  are  we?  Our  blossoming 
cut  down,  we  follow  the  setting  sun  into  darkness  and  the  night  of  rain. 

Lovers,  our  beloved,  is  this  the  love  for  which  our  mothers  bore 
us.?  O  mothers,  why  bring  us  forth  to  such  grieving.''  Our  souls  leap  up 
against  our  fate,  and  our  hearts  break  from  our  bosoms. 

Kiss  us,  young  sisters,  in  the  name  of  Love  and  Death  ;  and  of  the  Lord 
of  Love,  who  is  King  of  its  fountains  and  gardens,  and  opens  their  gates 
to  the  Beloved  in  Paradise. 

O  fair  and  stricken  and  undone — the  young  maids  answer — come  to 
us,  you  who  are  parted  from  the  lips  that  cherished  you  and  the  flesh  of 
your  flesh. 

And  you,  young  maidens — the  mourning  women  reply  to  them — you, 
who  have  missed  your  dream  and  your  fruition,  come  to  us,  dear  hearts. 

Poor  wives  .  .  .  Poor  maids! 

They  weep,  and  kiss  each  other,  and  clasp  each  other  smiling  through 
their  sorrow. 

Then,  singing,  they  part  beneath  the  roof  of  night,  while  Ocean  con- 
sumes the  last  embers  of  day,  and  darkens  under  the  sky  incarnadine. 

André  Su  ares 


[  150  :i 


EMILE-RENE  MENARD 
FIGURE 

FROM    A   SKETCH   IN   COLOURED  CRAYON 


MRS.  HUMPHRY  WARD 


WORDSWORTH'S  VALLEY  IN  W  AR-TIME 

August  8"",  1915.  It  is  now  four  days  since,  in  this  village  of  Gras- 
mere,  at  my  feet,  we  attended  one  of  those  anniversary  meetings,  mark- 
ing the  first  completed  year  of  this  appalling  war,  which  were  being 
called  on  that  night  over  the  length  and  breadth  of  England.  Our  meet- 
ing was  held  in  the  village  schoolroom;  the  farmers,  tradesmen,  inn- 
keeper and  summer  visitors  of  Grasmere  were  present,  and  we  passed 
the  resolution  which  all  England  was  passing  at  the  same  moment, 
pledging  ourselves,  separately  and  collectively,  to  help  the  war  and  con- 
tinue the  war,  till  the  purposes  of  England  were  attained,  by  the  libera- 
tion of  Belgium  and  northern  France,  and  the  chastisement  of  Germany. 

A  year  and  four  days,  then,  since  the  war  began,  and  in  a  remote 
garden  on  the  banks  of  the  Forth,  my  husband  and  I  passed,  breathless, 
to  each  other,  the  sheets  of  the  evening  paper  brought  from  Edinburgh 
by  the  last  train,  containing  the  greater  part  of  Sir  Edward  Grey's  speech 
delivered  in  the  House  of  Commons  that  afternoon  —  War  for  Belgium  — 
for  national  honour — and,  in  the  long  run,  for  national  existence!  War! 
— after  these  long  years  of  peace;  war,  with  its  dimly  foreseen  horrors, 
and  its  unfathomed  possibilities: — England  paused  and  shivered  as  the 
grim  spectre  stepped  across  her  path. 

And  I  stand  to-night  on  this  lovely  mountain-side,  looking  out  upon 
the  harvest  fields  of  another  August,  and  soon  another  evening  news- 
paper sent  up  from  the  village  below  will  bring  the  latest  list  of  our  dead 
and  our  maimed,  for  which  English  mothers  and  wives  have  looked  in 
terror,  day  after  day,  through  this  twelve  months. 

And  yet,  but  for  the  brooding  care  in  every  English  mind,  how  could 
one  dream  of  war  in  this  peaceful  Grasmere? 

Is  it  really  true  that  somewhere  in  this  summer  world,  beyond  those 
furthest  fells,  and  the  Yorkshire  moors  behind  them,  beyond  the  silver 
sea  dashing  its  waves  upon  our  Eastern  coasts,  there  is  still  going  on  the 

c  15'  : 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

ruin,  the  agony,  the  fury,  of  this  hideous  struggle  into  which  Germany 
plunged  the  world,  a  year  ago?  It  is  past  eight  o'clock  ;  but  the  sun  which 
is  just  dipping  behind  Silver  How  is  still  full  on  Loughrigg,  the  beautiful 
fell  which  closes  in  the  southern  end  of  the  lake.  Between  me  and  these 
illumined  slopes  lies  the  lake — shadowed  and  still,  broken  by  its  one 
green  island.  I  can  just  see  the  white  cups  of  the  water-lilies  floating 
above  the  mirrored  woods  and  rocks  that  plunge  so  deep  into  the  infin- 
ity below. 

The  square  tower  of  the  church  rises  to  my  left.  The  ashes  of  Words- 
worth lie  just  beyond  it — of  Wordsworth,  and  that  sister  with  the  "  wild 
eyes,"  who  is  scarcely  less  sure  of  immortality  than  himself,  of  Mary 
Wordsworth  too,  the  "  perfect  woman,  nobly  planned,"  at  whose  feet,  in 
her  white-haired  old  age,  I  myself  as  a  small  child  of  five  can  remember 
sitting,  nearly  sixty  years  ago.  A  little  further,  trees  and  buildings  hide 
what  was  once  the  grassy  margin  of  the  lake,  and  the  old  coach  road 
from  Ambleside,  with  Wordsworth's  cottage  upon  it.  Dove  Cottage,  where 
"mighty  poets"  gathered,  and  poetry  that  England  will  never  let  die 
was  written,  is  now,  as  all  the  world  knows,  a  national  possession,  and  is 
full  of  memorials  not  only  of  Wordsworth,  his  sister  and  his  wife,  but  of 
all  the  other  famous  men  who  haunted  there — De  Quincey,  who  lived 
therefor  more  than  twenty  years,  Southey  and  Coleridge;  or  of  Words- 
worth's younger  contemporaries  and  neighbours  in  the  Lakes,  such  as 
Arnold  of  Rugby,  and  Arnold's  poet  son  Matthew.  Generally  the  tiny 
house  and  garden  are  thronged  by  Americans  in  August,  who  crowd — 
in  the  Homeric  phrase — about  the  charming  place,  like  flies  about  the 
milk  pails  in  summer. 

But  this  year  there  are  no  Americans,  there  are  few  visitors,  indeed, 
of  any  kind  as  yet,  though  the  coaches  are  beginning  to  bring  them — 
scantily.  But  Grasmere  does  not  distress  itself  as  it  would  in  other  years, 
Wordsworth's  village  is  thinking  too  much  about  the  war.  Before  the  war 
—  so  I  learn  from  a  gentle  lady,  who  is  one  of  the  most  eager  guardians  of 
Grasmere  traditions,  and  has  made  remarkable  and  successful  efforts, 

C  152  ] 


MRS.  HUMPHRY  IVARD 

through  the  annual  "Grasmere  play,"  which  is  her  creation,  to  maintain 
the  rich  old  dialect  of  the  dales  —  there  were  two  Grasmere  men  in  the 
Navy,  two  soldiers  in  the  Regular  army,  and  three  Reservists— out  of  a 
total  male  population  of  all  ages  of  three  hundred  and  eighty-nine.  No 
one  ever  saw  a  soldier,  and  wages,  as  all  over  the  north, were  high.  There 
was  some  perplexity  of  mind  among  the  dale-folk  when  war  broke  out. 
France  and  Belgium  seemed  a  long  way  off — more  than  "  t'oother  side  o' 
Kendal,"  a  common  measure  of  distance  in  the  mind  of  the  old  folks, 
whose  schooling  lies  far  behind  them;  and  fighting  seemed  a  strange  thing 
to  these  men  of  peace.  "  What!  —  there'll  be  nea  fightin'!"  said  an  old 
man  in  the  village,  the  day  before  war  was  declared.  "There 's  nea  blacks 
amongst  'em  [^meaning  the  Germans^  — they'se  civilised  beings!"  But 
the  fighting  came,  and  Grasmere  did  as  Grasmere  did  in  1 803,  when  Pitt 
called  for  volunteers  for  Home  Defence.  "At  Grasmere,"  wrote  Words- 
worth, "we  have  turned  out  almost  to  a  man."  Last  year,  within  a  few 
months  of  the  outbreak  of  war,  seventy  young  men  from  the  village 
offered  themselves  to  the  army;  over  fifty  are  serving.  Their  women  left 
behind  have  been  steadily  knitting  and  sewing  since  they  left.  Every  man 
from  Grasmere  got  a  Christmas  present  of  two  pairs  of  socks. Two  sisters, 
washerwomen,  and  hard  worked,  made  a  pair  each,  in  four  consecutive 
weeks,  getting  up  at  four  in  the  morning  to  knit.  Day  after  day,  women 
from  the  village  have  gone  up  to  the  fells  to  gather  the  absorbent  spjiag- 
num  moss, which  they  dry  and  clean,  and  send  to  a  manufacturing  chem- 
ist to  be  prepared  for  hospital  use.  Half  a  ton  of  feather-weight  moss  has 
been  collected  and  cleaned  by  women  and  school-children.  One  old  wo- 
man who  could  not  give  money  gathered  the  tufts  of  wool  which  the  sheep 
leave  behind  them  on  the  brambles  and  fern,  washed  them,  and  made 
them  into  the  little  pillows  which  prop  wounded  limbs  in  hospital.  The 
cottages  and  farms  send  eggs  every  week  to  the  wounded  in  France.  The 
school-children  alone  bring  fifty  a  week.  One  woman,  whose  main  re- 
.source  was  her  fowls,  offered  twelve  eggs  a  week  ;  which  meant  starving 
herself.  And  all  the  time,  two  pence,  three  pence,  six  pence  a  week  was 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  HOMELESS 

being  collected  by  the  people  themselves,  from  the  poorest  homes,  to- 
wards the  support  of  the  Belgian  colony  in  the  neighbouring  village  of 
Ambleside. 

One  sits  and  ponders  these  things,  as  the  golden  light  recedes  from 
Loughrigg,  and  that  high  crag  above  Wordsworth's  cottage.  Little  Gras- 
mere  has  indeed  done  all  she  could,  and  in  this  lovely  valley,  the  heart 
of  Wordsworth's  people,  the  descendants  of  those  dalesmen  and  dales- 
women  whom  he  brought  into  literature, is  one — passionately  one — with 
the  heart  of  the  Allies.  Lately  the  war  has  bitten  harder  into  the  life  of 
the  village.  Of  its  fifty  young  sons,  many  are  now  in  the  thick  of  the  Dar- 
danelles struggle  ;  three  are  prisoners  of  war,  two  are  said  to  have  gone 
down  in  the  Royal  Edward,  one  officer  has  fallen,  others  are  wounded. 
Grasmere  has  learnt  much  geography  and  history  this  last  year;  and  it 
has  shared  to  the  full  in  the  general  deepening  and  uplifting  of  the  Eng- 
lish soul,  which  the  war  has  brought  about.  France,  that  France  which 
Wordsworth  loved  in  his  first  generous  youth,  is  in  all  our  hearts,— 
France,  and  the  sufferings  of  France  ;  Belgium,  too,  the  trampled  and  out- 
raged victim  of  a  Germany  eternally  dishonoured.  And  where  shall  we 
find  nobler  words  in  which  to  clothe  the  feeling  of  England  towards  a 
France  which  has  lost  Rheims,  or  a  Belgium  which  has  endured  Louvain, 
than  those  written  a  hundred  years  ago  in  that  cottage  across  the  lake.? 

Air,  earth  and  skies — 
There 's  not  a  breathing  of  the  common  wind 
That  will  forget  thee;  thou  hast  great  allies; 
Thy  friends  are  exultations,  agonies. 
And  love,  and  man's  unconquerable  mind  I 

To  Germany,  then,  the  initial  weight  of  big  battalions,  the  initial  successes 
of  a  murderous  science  :  to  the  nations  leagued  against  her,  the  uncon- 
querable power  of  those  moral  faiths  which  fire  our  clay,  and  in  the  end 
mould  the  history  of  men  ! 

.  .  .  Along  the  mountain-side,  the  evening  wind  rises.  The  swell  and 

C    154   ] 


MRS.  HUMPHRY  Jf:4RD 

beat  of  it  among  the  rocks  and  fern,  as  the  crags  catch  it,  echo  it,  and 
throw  it  back  reverberate,  are  as  the  sound  of  marching  feet.  .  .  . 

I  hear  it  in  the  tread — irresistible,  inexorable — of  an  avenging  Hu- 
manity. The  living  and  the  dead  are  there,  and  in  their  hands  they  bear 
both  Doom  and  Comforting. 

Mary  A.  Ward 


(#^  Of  this  book,  in  additioji  to  the  regular  edition,  there  have  been  printed 
and  numbered  one  hundred  and  seventy-Jive  copies  de  luxe,  of  larger  format . 

JVtimbers  1-50  on  French  hand-made  paper,  containing  four  facsimiles  of  manu- 
scripts and  a  second  set  of  illustrations  in  portfolio. 

Numbers  51-175  on  Van  Gelder  paper. 


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